August 29, 2023

Stacey Crawshaw-Lewis to Speak on Tax Increment Financing at WFOA Conference

Pacifica founding partner Stacey Crawshaw-Lewis will speak at the 68th annual Washington Finance Officer’s Association (WFOA) Conference next week as part of a roundtable discussion about Tax Increment Financing (TIF), a public financing tool that Washington State counties, cities, and ports may use to fund public infrastructure projects.

Although TIF is a traditional public financing method that has been in use in other areas nationally and internationally for several decades, the Washington Legislature first passed TIF legislation in May 2021 (ESHB 1189, the “TIF Act”). Previous attempts at TIF legislation conflicted with certain provisions of Washington law.

TIF is a “value capture” approach to financing public improvements. TIF bonds are issued to finance public improvements. The bonds are paid from increased property taxes (the captured value) in the TIF area generated by rising property values resulting from the public improvements.

The TIF Act allows counties, cities and port districts (or any combination of the three) to form increment areas, and allocates regular property taxes of overlapping local taxing districts generated by increased property tax values within the increment area to the sponsoring entity to finance public improvement costs. An increasing number of local governments are using TIF financing.

Stacey will participate in the WFOA TIF Roundtable discussion on Friday, September 22 at 10:30am.

For more information about TIF, please read our Public Finance update. If you have any questions about TIF, please reach out to Stacey or any member of our Public Finance team.