[CPEO-BIF] Subsidies

[Sharon Barr]

As someone who has worked in both the public economic development 
sector and also in the private sector as a developer of challenged 
sites, I have found the dialogue interesting and dealing with important 
issues of public subsidy that go beyond "brownfields" issues.
Brownfields subsidies are often, though not always, treated in the 
public policy world as a subset of the larger world of economic 
development subsidy.  This is sometimes appropriate, sometimes not 
because  the ultimate goals of brownfields remediation and reuse may 
not be tied to traditional economic development goals (ie job creation, 
tax base increase).
As a non-economist, I  approach all government subsidy relating to real 
estate and economic development with the question:  is the government 
money needed to kick start economic activity where a market is weak or 
nonexistent? In other words, is public money necessary to "level the 
playing field" in a particular area?  The answer may be "yes" for a 
whole host of reasons, contamination of property being just one of 
them,  As someone who has had to make decisions about how much to spend 
where, I can tell you that it is very hard to come up with a perfect 
formula that also works in the dirty nitty-gritty world of political 
influence and decisionmaking. One cannot underestimate the role of 
politics in this arena--whether good, bad or indifferent, just not 
mathematical.   Having said that, I also operate from the belief that 
most, if not all, public sector people want to do the right thing and 
that developers will simply take advantage of what is offered.
It is also important to separate real estate development policies from 
economic development.  Economic development subsidies should be focused 
on creating economic activity in a region, based on the natural and 
human resources available.  Real estate development subsidies should be 
focused on the locational issues relating to a particular piece of 
property and how the property fits into a comprehensive development 
plan for a community.  Often a real estate developer's goal is not 
creating jobs in the traditional economic development  sense.   How job 
creation relates to the availability of specific real estate--whether 
brownfields or not-- is a particularly local issue.  The discussion or 
brownfields subsidies often conflates the two.

Sharon Barr