Editor’s note: This commentary is by Sue Prent, an artist/writer living in St. Albans who routinely blogs on Green Mountain Daily.
St. Albans City Manager Dominic Cloud has picked an odd fight with state Auditor Doug Hoffer over the findings of the auditor’s recent report on the city’s TIF district, which identified multiple compliance issues.
The controversy has seen assorted city dignitaries join the city manager in circling the wagons of outraged denial with such fury that it invites comment. Cloud somehow enlisted the cooperation of the Vermont Economic Progress Council to change the rules, after the fact, thus, bringing the city’s TIF decisions back into compliance.
That’s a pretty neat trick, one that many a private sector business would envy; but as a city taxpayer, I find Cloud’s aggressive attitude toward audit oversight troubling.
Hoffer is not alone in his skepticism over the effectiveness of TIF stimulation. A quick Google search reveals the extent of that skepticism. Doubt about the ultimate value of the instrument does not disqualify the auditor from doing his job of oversight without bias.
TIF has a tendency to be presented to less-engaged local taxpayers as virtually “free money,” and in the municipality’s haste to exploit its window of opportunity to the max, rules and limitations may be overstretched. This is why disinterested oversight is essential to getting state taxpayers’ maximum value from their investment.
The anger and vitriol exhibited by Cloud in his response to what is, after all, a professional opinion, is most unbecoming. I have read the full report and see no cause for the tone of these responses.
The city made some errors in administering its TIF. VEPC’s decision to change the rules after the fact does not alter that simple fact. We can choose to regard those as innocent errors rather than cynical manipulations to cheat the system, but it doesn’t help the situation to try and paint the auditor as some kind of villain. You know the old line about protesting too much?
The reason we have a state auditor is that public entities in the same interest spheres as their economic “partners” (or clients) should not be relied upon to impartially judge the legal boundaries of how those “partners” manage the assets they have been given. VEPC has rightly been characterized as a “partner” to the cities entrusted with TIF designation. For that support, St. Albans City should rightly be grateful; but VEPC should not be in a position to arbitrarily move the boundary lines of compliance when one of its “clients” oversteps.
