Economic development legislation continues to advance

AWC’s priority bill to reopen the Local Revitalization Financing (LRF) program is still alive with a “necessary to implement the budget” (NTIB) designation.

We are pleased that HB 2804 (which would reopen and refund the LRF program for new projects) is still alive after the latest cutoff because it has been designated as part of budget discussions. The bill has not yet been brought up for a vote in the House, but this designation means that it is no longer subject to those cutoffs. However, it is now dependent on being included in the supplemental budget process.

That means cities still need to reach out to legislators and let them know that this bill is important because it provides a tool for funding infrastructure that supports local economic development projects. Ask them to include adequate funding for LRF in the supplemental budget.

Unfortunately, the bills (HB 2778 and HJR 4212) that would have created a path for authorizing property tax-based Tax Increment Financing (TIF) did not survive the house of origin cutoff deadline and are considered dead for this session. We are grateful to the prime sponsor of those bills, Rep. Pat Sullivan (D–Covington) and the cosponsors for introducing the bills. Ultimately, it gave us a chance to restart the conversation about TIF in our state. We are optimistic that this opens up the opportunity to do more work on TIF during the interim.