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Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Ind. Gov't. - "Preservation advocates push Indiana tax cut's expansion"
Lesley Stedman Weidenbener, now of the Franklin College Statehouse Bureau, has a long story today picked up by the Louisville Courier Journal that begins:
INDIANAPOLIS — Advocates of historic preservation are pushing state lawmakers to expand a tax credit they say will create economic development and help boost restoration of Indiana’s downtowns.Currently, the Indiana Historic Preservation Tax Credit is ineffective, said Marsh Davis, president of Indiana Landmarks, a nonprofit group that works to protect historically significant properties.
That’s because the cap on the amount of credits issued annually is so low that developers and investors must now wait more than a decade to reap its rewards, he said. That means the credit fails to act as an incentive for projects that need just a small boost to become reality, Davis said.
“We don’t support it. We don’t promote it to people,” Davis told the legislature’s Commission on State Tax and Financing Policy during a meeting Monday at the Statehouse. “Who really wants to wait until 2023 to get a credit? As a preservation tool, it would be the first thing we’d be out championing, but we can’t do that right now because of this decades-plus backlog.”
Lawmakers, though, said that while the tax credit is a worthy program, any expansion would cost the state money at a time when the budget is already tight.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on October 4, 2011 08:31 AM
Posted to Indiana Government