Center for Open Government: Transparency is key to west Louisville TIF establishing long-term legitimacy.
In his weekly column, the Bluegrass Institute’s CEO Jim Waters brought forward an important discussion about the “legislative chicanery” still being employed by the Kentucky General Assembly to enact controversial legislation.
Exhibit A from the 2021 session was the west Louisville TIF. (HB 321)
Waters pointed out:
House Bill 321 was initially benign legislation… but the bill morphed in the Senate into a legislative blob creating a controversial tax increment financing district in west Louisville which will allocate up to $1 billion in sales and property taxes over the next 30 years to a board largely unaccountable to taxpayers.
Lawmakers were asked to vote on this version of the bill a half-hour before the entire legislative session ended.
Legislative advocates for the West End Opportunity Partnership (the Board created by the legislation to govern the west Louisville TIF) talked often about the months of work they put into writing the lengthy and complex legislation. However, they dropped the bill on the last day for bill introductions, expecting rank-and-file legislators and the public to evaluate and absorb a massive effort to redevelop a huge area of the state’s largest city with less than fourteen working days left in the session.
The Bluegrass Institute made a number of recommendations to Rep. Ken Fleming, the sponsor of the House companions to SB100 and SB125.
Our strongest recommendation was to kick the legislation to the interim for a full vetting. We didn’t oppose the idea outright. Instead, we thought it was critical to involve a wide range of stakeholders to balance the opportunity with legitimate concerns stemming from poorly designed TIFs, like the KFC YUM Center. That appeared to be where things stood until the final hours of the final night of the session when the Senate amended HB 321 to ram through the west Louisville project.
Clearly, the effort could have benefitted from greater stakeholder engagement.
An April op-ed in the Courier-Journal from the Coalition of West Louisville Neighborhoods didn’t mince words about the process that created the TIF:
We, the Coalition of West Louisville Neighborhood Associations (CWLNA) located in west Louisville are writing to express our concerns over a growing pattern of state legislators creating laws while ignoring due process. Meaning, the presentation of the TIF legislation, having the lack of due process with the absence of community awareness, understanding and inputs, should never have been passed.
A recent WDRB story reported on the skepticism expressed by residents in the affected neighborhoods:
"If it is really for the community, then the community should've been engaged from the forefront of the development of this, so that's a concern," said Donovan Taylor, with the Coalition of West Louisville Neighborhood Associations.
Jackie Floyd said she's frustrated with the lack of details from lawmakers, including the impacts on the area's renters. "We want some answers because this impacts our lives…If the TIF turns out good, everybody's happy. If it turns out bad, we suffer."
Al Cross, a former member of the Frankfort press corps, has praised Senate President Robert Stiver’s motivations for enacting the west-end TIF while also acknowledging “some Democratic House members from Louisville balked when asked to vote on it half an hour before they had to adjourn.” Cross, now a director for rural journalism at the University of Kentucky, is a long-time voice for Kentucky’s political establishment and likely lacks much feel for the grass roots sentiment on this issue.
Bottom line: Legislative leaders botched the creation of the west Louisville TIF. Their disregard for transparency and insistence on enacting the legislation in the final minutes of the session created understandable suspicion and even cynicism as additional details came to light.
Working with Rep. Fleming, the Bluegrass Institute got several transparency and accountability measures inserted into HB 321. One provision in particular - requiring the West End Opportunity Partnership (WEOP) to adhere to Kentucky’s Open Meetings and Open Records statutes - provides the framework to monitor the actions and governance of the TIF. The Center for Open Government intends to do just that.
How the WEOP responds to the demands of open government will determine if it can build legitimacy with stakeholders and taxpayers over the long run.