What's wrong with TIF?

 

Tax Increment Financing (TIF) presents several primary drawbacks, including the diversion of funds from essential public services (such as schools and parks), reduced budget transparency, inequitable distribution of wealth, and the risk of placing an unfair tax burden on property owners outside the designated TIF districts. [1, 2]

Drawbacks of Tax Increment Financing (TIF)

• Diversion from Public Services: TIF freezes the baseline property taxes available to overlapping taxing bodies. Consequently, entities like local school districts, libraries, and public safety departments lose out on growing tax revenues that would typically fund their operations.
• Budget Strain: Because TIF districts isolate increments for specific development projects, general city budgets can shrink. This reduction in unrestricted funds sometimes forces municipalities to raise tax rates on properties outside the TIF district to maintain community-wide services.
• Lack of Transparency: TIF funds can operate outside the normal civic budgeting process. This can result in limited public oversight, making it easier for funds to be misallocated to politically favored projects rather than areas with the greatest public need.
• Gentrification & Displacement: Subsidies used in TIF districts often accelerate rising property values and rents, forcing long-term residents and local, small-scale businesses out of the area.
• Overstated Returns on Investment: TIFs are intended for developments that would not occur "but for" the subsidy. However, municipalities frequently use them on projects that would have occurred naturally, resulting in a waste of public funds.
• Financial Risk: If a development fails to generate the anticipated property or sales tax revenue, municipalities are often left to cover the municipal bonds or debt issued to fund the initial infrastructure. [2, 9]

[1] https://www.lincolninst.edu/pt-br/publications/articles/why-tax-increment-financing-often-fails-how-communities-can-do-better/

[2] https://www.facebook.com/groups/1508709089408538/posts/3855008558111901/

[3] https://www.civicfed.org/tif-primer

[4] https://www.erisinfo.com/blogs/tax-increment-financing/

[5] https://shelterforce.org/2026/03/17/tax-increment-financing-harms-cities-lets-rein-it-in/

[6] https://equitablegrowth.org/tax-increment-financing-and-u-s-infrastructure/

[7] https://search.proquest.com/openview/628937dd64a1b254f512f665b228823a/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=38209

[8] https://www.sierraclub.org/missouri/blog/2013/06/tax-increment-financing-race-bottom-hurts-our-environment

[9] https://www.lwm-info.org/DocumentCenter/View/2109/Managing-the-Risks-of-Tax-Increment-Financing-Matt-Dregne

Essay: How and why police officers never learn the fundamentals of constitutional law

 

Police training in the United States averages roughly 21 weeks (about 5 to 6 months), with only a fraction of those hours allocated to constitutional law. Once in the field, new officers rely heavily on the informal "occupational culture" of veteran trainers, resulting in the propagation of flawed legal knowledge, which is only corrected through liability-driven lawsuits and remedial training. [1, 2, 3]

The systemic issues mentioned reflect a documented cycle of inadequate legal instruction and informal learning in law enforcement:

1. The Short Academy and the Legal Void

• Low Time Allocation: The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) highlights that the average length of basic training for state and local academies is roughly 806 hours, and foundational legal instruction is often limited to a few specific topic areas. Academies typically prioritize operational skills like firearms proficiency, defensive tactics, and vehicle operations over complex legal theory.
• Surface-Level Constitutional Law: Instruction on the First Amendment (speech, assembly) and Fourth Amendment (search and seizure, probable cause) is often taught only as it pertains to absolute basics, such as reading an individual their Miranda rights or securing a warrant. Cadets are rarely taught to navigate the nuanced, real-time gray areas of lawful detainment, preventing recording devices, or stopping individuals in public spaces. [8, 9, 10, 11]

2. The "Apprenticeship" Model and Dissemination of Misinformation

• Informal Training: Following the academy, officers transition to Field Training Programs, where they are partnered with older, veteran officers. During this phase, new recruits learn the "real" job, which frequently involves the transmission of habits, shortcuts, and legal myths.
• Generational Telephone Game: Because many veterans learned the job through similarly flawed or outdated training, procedural and legal myths are passed down. This results in the institutionalization of misinformation across generations of a department.

3. Poor Supervision and Ineffective Oversight

• The Normalization of Deviance: When poor supervision allows bad habits or unconstitutional practices to go unchecked, the agency implicitly endorses those actions. A lack of regular legal audits or strict oversight means that officers operate in a bubble where improper conduct becomes the accepted departmental standard.
• Lack of Ongoing Education: Following basic certification, the average officer typically receives very little continuous training on evolving constitutional case law, such as Supreme Court rulings that directly impact how an officer may conduct a traffic stop or respond to a citizen filming them.

4. Corrective Action Through Litigation and Remedial Training

• Catalysts for Change: Because internal oversight often fails to catch unconstitutional practices, departments are routinely forced to educate their ranks through the lens of litigation. Encounters that result in civil rights lawsuits, high-profile public misconduct, or Department of Justice (DOJ) consent decrees often serve as the primary catalyst for department-wide reform.
• Court-Mandated Overhauls: It is common for agencies to overhaul their policies and institute mandatory remedial training—such as de-escalation programs or updated First/Fourth Amendment directives—only after severe public scrutiny or heavy financial payouts force the municipality's hand. [13, 14, 15]

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56834733

[2] https://www.police1.com/how-to-become-a-police-officer/articles/what-to-expect-from-police-academy-training-TphD8qpkqgg68nYc/

[3] https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/slletatti22st.pdf

[4] https://www.arlingtontx.gov/City-Services/Public-Safety/Police-Department/Police-Recruiting/Police-Academy-Experience

[5] https://bjs.ojp.gov/topics/law-enforcement/training

[6] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10986111211013311

[7] https://apbweb.com/2024/05/police-academy-training-time-for-reform/

[8] https://www.quora.com/Before-the-6-month-police-academy-starts-should-future-officers-do-a-two-week-course-studying-human-rights-and-Fifth-Amendment-rights-and-if-they-cant-pass-a-written-exam-test-on-these-2-they-cant-go-on-to-the-6

[9] https://ejournals.eu/pliki_artykulu_czasopisma/pelny_tekst/9c6bb61c-8d43-4b95-b870-7f851647ad1c/pobierz

[10] https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-journal/the-fellow-officer-rule-and-the-officer-assistance-statute-in-florida-separate-assessments-of-prob/

[11] https://www.policeoneacademy.com/law-enforcement-training/legal/

[12] https://www.quora.com/Do-you-believe-that-Police-in-the-U-S-should-go-through-more-than-6-months-of-training-in-the-Academy-and-why-or-why-not

[13] https://post.ca.gov/portals/0/post_docs/basic_course_resources/workbooks/PC_832_VOL_2_V-3.10.pdf

[14] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047235225001813

[15] https://quizlet.com/study-guides/law-enforcement-best-practices-lessons-from-the-field-24ea4348-60f6-4146-8d68-c2fc4033c5f8

A few bad policy decisions of the 1900s

 

1913 – Implementation of individual taxes led to a bloated government, incentivized 85% of tax lobbyists to represent corporate interests, enabling overburdening of the workforce and the general marketplace, and giving business interests motivation to loot newly created government revenue on the backs of the tax-paying public.

1953 – Military conflicts debt-financed, not tax-funded, leading to enormous growth of national debt. Much of the fruits of our labor (treasure) go to military defense contractors.

1870-1970 – End of century-long trade surplus, leading to diminishing domestic wealth creation, dismantling of US manufacturing, urban decay, violent crime, and the drug war.

1971 – Nixon Shock, causing deep & broad economic instability, and individual wealth & income shrinkage, furthering blight.

1973 – Nixon’s HMO Act, incentivized for-profit speculative trading in medical care providers and pharma. Public medicine further gave-way to market-managed hospital care, pharma and related insurance throughout the 80s & 90s.

1981-1988 – Reagan deregulation led to broad corporate consolidation, destruction of the Fairness Doctrine, escalation of national partisan resentment, furthering corporate favoritism above public interest.

1996 – Telecom bill, enabled massive media consolidation, further diminishing local ownership of media enterprises.