At the beginning of March, the Goldwater Institute filed a lawsuit against the city of Phoenix on behalf of popular downtown bar Angels Trumpet. Their argument? A deal they made to build a 19-story apartment building of smaller-than-average "micro" units violates the Arizona Constitution.
The lawsuit says the city is shirking its duty to uniformly collect property taxes by giving the developers a GPLET for this project — or a Government Property Lease Excise Tax, a tool that cities use to give a lower property-tax rate to a developer to aid redevelopment.
David Swindell is director of the Center for Urban Innovation at Arizona State University. He has studied redevelopment mechanisms like GPLETs in other cities, and, he says, these tools can be seen as a good way of working toward the overall development goals of an area.
But many conservatives call this corporate welfare, that it’s just the government picking political winners and losers.
The Show will plan on watching the progress of the Angels Trumpet/GPLET lawsuit and be sure to report updates in the future.
