Book Description

Since the late 1980's, the Minnesota Legislature has enacted important reforms to Tax Increment Financing (TIF), the development tool that enables cities and other jurisdictions to capture the additional taxes which are generated by a development project to finance up-front site preparation or acquisition costs. The purpose of the reforms was to limit the use of TIF to certain kinds of development projects and to eliminate abuses of the financing tool. While the amount of captured tax capacity grew by an average of 24%/yr. between 1984 and 1989, it slowed to just 2%/yr. between 1990 and 1995.