Minnesota Opinion: Demise of historic tax credit ‘a tragedy’

Even in a session crammed with frustration and failure, during which the Minnesota Legislature fell brief on getting a lot of something carried out in any respect, this was shockingly unacceptable: The inaction of lawmakers allowed a profitable state historic tax credit score program to die — regardless that it had been liable for serving to save greater than 170 historic buildings statewide since 2011, … whereas additionally creating 28,000 jobs and pumping greater than $5 billion into Minnesota’s financial system.

All that good simply gone, as a result of lawmakers couldn’t discover methods to work collectively and since they couldn’t do the job they have been elected to do.

This system — a roaring, efficient engine of financial improvement and historic preservation for greater than a decade — expired final week on the ultimate day of June.

“It is a tragedy for our state,” Meghan Elliott, an actual property developer, the founding principal of a Minneapolis constructing advisor, and the co-founder of the RevitalizeMN coalition stated in a press release to the media. “Minnesota had probably the most efficient and admired packages within the nation. Right now, 38 different states have variations of the Historic Tax Credit score, to incentivize and help historic redevelopment. Minnesota is now in a minority, and can see builders, development jobs, and financial development migrate to states that supply this important help.”

Minnesota’s historic tax credit score was created in 2010 through the “Nice Recession” to assist put individuals to work whereas additionally saving necessary and traditionally important buildings, these locations that protect our previous and inform our communities’ tales. State historic tax credit are sometimes paired with federal historic tax credit, every overlaying as much as 20% of a challenge’s prices, making many tasks possible in any respect.

Lawmakers had the chance this session to increase this system or, higher but, to make it everlasting. It has greater than confirmed its price, returning practically $10 for each $1 invested by the state. As an alternative, lawmakers did nothing.

Because the RevitalizeMN coalition identified in its assertion, dozens of tasks across the state at the moment are stalled or could also be deserted altogether with out this important redevelopment software. …

“This has been very disappointing … to see a program that has been so efficient on so many fronts with a lot help merely expire as a result of inaction,” Heidi Swank, government director of Rethos, a St. Paul-based historic-preservation nonprofit and founding group of the RevitalizeMN coalition, stated within the assertion. “The job loss, the chance to protect neighborhood historical past, and the lower of our financial competitiveness as a area — it’s tough to calculate the true price.”

The Minnesota Legislature can nonetheless save the state’s historic tax credit score program. The prospects of a particular session seem dim, nevertheless, and if the governor does name lawmakers again to the Capitol this summer time, different urgent issues probably will take priority, issues like a bonding invoice and what to do with the state’s file funds surplus.

This system additionally might be reinstated within the 2023 legislative session. It may be a excessive precedence — a hit for day one even.

However that may nonetheless imply a complete yr misplaced with out this system there to go off the additional erosion of our shared and proud previous, with out the tax credit placing Minnesotans to work, and with out its stimulation of native and state economies. That actually is a “tragedy for our state.”

This Minnesota Opinion editorial is the opinion of the Duluth Information Tribune Editorial Board.