Township sued over Costco, Whole Foods shopping center tax plan
“The East Penn school directors approved the TIF plan, which will be overseen by the Lehigh County Industrial Development Authority, in May 2013 and reaffirmed that decision in April. Lehigh County commissioners rejected the plan in June 2013. As a result, the county will reap 100 percent of additional tax revenue brought in by Hamilton Crossings.
The suit, filed Monday in Lehigh County Court, alleges the ordinances commissioners approved with a 3-2 vote June 5 violate Pennsylvania’s TIF act and Cedar Realty’s due process rights. The company is asking the court to invalidate the ordinances, which call for creating and participating in a TIF district.
“Especially in matters of taxation, government has an obligation (to scrupulously) follow statutory requirements and afford the public a fair and unbiased forum to be heard,” the suit says.
“The (Lower Macungie) board, however, disregarded the requirements of the TIF act as part of an outcome-driven process, tainted with conflicts of interest, to fund a high-end shopping center in a wealthy suburb,” it continues. “The board thereby abused the stated purpose of (the) TIF act: the amelioration of blight in urban communities.”
The township determined that the site developers are eyeing for Hamilton Crossings is blighted because it will require extensive environmental remediation after years of mining on the property. The suit describes the site as “mostly an empty field in one of the wealthiest suburbs in Lehigh County, and not in any reasonable sense ‘urban’ or ‘blight.'”
Also, because the same law firm represents the LCIDA, the Lower Macungie planning commission and township commissioners, this “precluded independent consideration of the Hamilton Crossings TIF district by the board and tainted with bad faith the entire result-driven process by which the board came to enact the ordinances,” the suit says.
“The TIF subsidy is not necessary for the construction of the Hamilton Crossings shopping center. Rather, the TIF subsidy merely assures that the project is more profitable and makes its developer more money. It is de facto corporate welfare.””
Petty, Precious. The Express Times 12 July 2014.