By Ryan Cummins

Guest columnist

”Hotel Coming to Site of Old VCSC Building” — Terre Haute Tribune, July 26, 2024

I write to you about another in a long list of eco-devo (economic development) scams, a particularly obscene one. That it is presented as a straight news story in a humdrum manner is even more disheartening. But then, I don’t expect much from local “news” reporters and they rarely disappoint. Here is the key passage:

“Phase one of the project will cost more than $40 million. The city will get a 114-room Courtyard by Marriott. The city is using about $14 million in the (federal) American Rescue Plan Agency, the (regional) Ready 1.0 program and (municipal) Tax Increment Financing funds to get the new hotel off the ground. Terre Haute Mayor Brandon Sakbun says the public funds had to be used to … (blah, blah, blah).”

The “city” in this case are the hapless taxpayers of Terre Haute who will get nothing. They will not own the hotel, will not get a share of the profits, will not own any asset producing a return on investment. They will only get their money confiscated — at the point of a gun if necessary — and given to someone else with the influence to grab it.

$14,000,000 — just think what local taxpayers could have done with that size of a tax cut. After all, isn’t that how abatements are sold to us, tax cuts that spur economic development regardless of how politically selective?

But the dollars from Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan were created out of thin air by the Federal Reserve. We are all paying the inflation tax to fund them, a tax that is the most egregious and destructive to the average citizen. And the state’s Ready 1.0 dollars are not some gift by your politicians in Indianapolis. They are your dollars, again, taken from you by threat of force.

And don’t even get me started on the unethical scam that is TIF. If you want to know more about that immoral con, go to www.inpolicy.org and enter it into the search box. Or call me and we will go have a beer and discuss it.

Every elected person in my city and perhaps yours should be ashamed. Instead, they are congratulating themselves, which is most disheartening of all.

Ryan Cummins, the owner of a third-generation business and an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, is a former chairman of the appropriations committee of the Terre Haute Common Council. He also is a longtime critic of public-private partnerships and government economic development projects. He wrote this as an open letter to his fellow citizens and neighbors. Send comments to [email protected].