Not-so-super TIRZ

Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones are an admission of failure.

A TIRZ works by locking in the dollar amount that the city receives in property tax revenue. If rising property values cause revenues to grow above that figure, they're redirected to a TIRZ fund controlled by an appointed board that is supposed to improve local infrastructure and help foster business development.

Every time City Hall creates a TIRZ, it is a vote of no confidence in its own ability to properly collect and spend taxpayer dollars. It is a confession that Houston should be managed by unelected boards at secretive meetings who can issue debt without voter approval.

Sometimes a TIRZ spends money on worthwhile infrastructure: Uptown creating a Bus Rapid Transit system. Other times TIRZ expenditures are more questionable: Uptown lining feeder roads with concrete balls.

But each TIRZ represents a moment when our elected officials decided to hand over the purse strings to someone else, diverting dollars that could have been spent shoring up pension obligations or paying down debt.

Despite these underlying problems, TIRZes have one redeeming value: They often work.

The politics of City Council can make it difficult to provide the infrastructure that fosters business development. Sometimes delegating to hyperlocal boards is better than relying on government bureaucracy. Drive through one of Houston's successful TIRZ areas, and the results are readily apparent with well-paved roads and sidewalks and all sorts of improvements.

Houston's less-successful TIRZes aren't nearly as impressive, with reckless finances that waste money on consultants and open the door to hidden corruption. As we've said before, every TIRZ should be implemented only for specific improvement projects and should be promptly terminated when the project is finished. New projects may merit extensions, but a TIRZ should not exist in perpetuity, sucking up tax dollars for decades.

The new Greater Houston Zone seems to violate every one of those requirements. A project years in the making, this city-county TIRZ covers a sprawling, non-contiguous territory of eastern downtown and underdeveloped areas around NRG Park. It has a planned timeline that stretches to 2042 with $300 million in public facility and infrastructure improvements. Despite categorical denials, we can't help but wonder whether any of those proclaimed improvements will involve the Astrodome.

A scheme of this scale removes far too much power from the hands of elected officials, and that may be the point. The original TIRZ proposal in 2009 involved funding a joint city-county processing center, despite voters rejecting a similar plan in a bond vote (they later approved a smaller project). What other grand construction will Houstonians unwittingly fund in this super-TIRZ?

Perhaps, the ends of this plan will end up justifying the means. This TIRZ was a lynchpin in the city-county deal to develop the BBVA Compass soccer stadium. The infrastructure projects could end up proving their worth in new development. And the whole scheme stands as a symbol of growing cooperation between the city and county. In fact, the county will be providing most of the money, returning 65 percent of new tax dollars in contrast to the city's five percent. Houston's greatest contribution is the ability to issue TIRZ debt.

Houstonians should be suspicious of relying on a system of taxation without representation to fund infrastructure, even worthwhile projects. We would rather see our politicians put in the hard work of improving local government, and that is something a TIRZ cannot do.