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July 3, 2009

Readers' Forum: July 5, 2009

Sorting out vagaries of tax abatements

It’s not often that the Local and Bistate section has so many articles that are as interesting as last Wednesday’s paper (July 1). First, of course, was the article about the train at Deming Park. I thought it was very nice of them to ask people to donate the money, at least at first. It is always good when a part of government tries to ask for the money from citizens, instead of the usual method.

Then there was the Air Pollution folks who had their revenue cut off. They didn’t bother to ask for donations.

The real interesting story, though, was the one about abatements. If you didn’t get a chance to read it, you should. Howard Greninger’s story detailed that the Vigo County Council determined that the companies that received abatements were in compliance, even though they weren’t in compliance. I’ve always appreciated the exact and specific nature of tax abatement language, but I digress.

The story then went on to clearly state, at least for three companies cited in the article, that each of them was not at all in compliance with the “specific conditions of future numbers of jobs and salaries”, agreed to in their statements contained in their respective abatements.

How can those “specific conditions” be both true and false at the same time? Now there’s a question citizens of Vigo County deserve an answer to.

The answer is that those “specific conditions” aren’t specific at all. That’s the magic of economic development language. It sounds seriously meaningful when in reality it is completely and totally meaningless. When something can mean anything, it can, and does, usually mean nothing at all.

If you are a property taxpayer, you should think about that in the next few weeks when you get your property tax bill. You might want to give your council member a call when you do.

— Ryan Cummins

Terre Haute

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