Year of Publication

2021

College

Martin School of Public Policy and Administration

Degree Name

Master of Public Administration

Committee Chair

Dr. JS Butler

Executive Summary

Tax Increment Financing(TIF)is one of the most popular economic development tools in use, as well as one of the few economic development tools available to municipal governments. Although it was slow to be adopted by many states, currently every state, as well as the District of Colombia, has active TIF districts to back over $35 billion in bonds across the country. Despite its popularity, there is no consensus on the ability of TIF to create a planned and measurable outcome. Because of this ambiguity, TIF usage is clustered across the country as state legislatures have put in varying requirements to restrict the ability of local governments to create districts. The purpose of this paper is to analyze current TIF usage by states across the country, as well the different requirements each state has for local governments to create districts and their effectiveness on limiting district creation. This study uses three linear regressions with each requirement in use by multiple states as an independent variables being tested against the total districts in each state, the total funding in each state backed by TIF revenue and the funding per capita in each state backed by TIF revenue. Findings indicate that requirements that were passed to limit TIF usage are not associated with decreased TIF usage. This study does find that additional planning requirements for district creation may be overburdensome for local governments. This study concludes that the requirements put in place by state legislatures may not matter as much as how each law was written for its ability to limit district creation.

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