The Michigan legislature recently enacted Public Act 57 of 2018, otherwise known as the “Recodified Tax Increment Financing Act” (the “RTIFA”), which serves to streamline Michigan’s statutory tax increment financing scheme.
Prior to this legislation, governmental entities in Michigan could utilize a number of individual economic development statutes to enact tax increment finance authorities, such as the DDA Act, the TIFA Act, and the Local Development Financing Act, among others. The RTIFA does the following:
- Repeals most individual Michigan statutory provisions which authorize TIF authorities (except for Brownfield Redevelopment Authorities) and recodifies them under this new statute, and
- Creates additional reporting requirements for municipalities involved in tax increment financing throughout the state, including municipalities that currently have a TIF authority.
In other words, each individual statute conferring TIF authority is incorporated under the RTIFA without change. However, in addition to combining most TIF authorities into one statutory location, the RTIFA added additional TIF reporting requirements that were previously nonexistent, which will be the main impact of the RTIFA felt by Michigan municipalities.
Under the new reporting requirements, each municipality that (1) creates a TIF authority or (2) has already created a TIF authority must establish a website (or use an existing municipal website) that allows public access to various documents and records of the TIF authority and also requires that the TIF authority hold a number of annual public “informational” meetings. Further, a TIF authority must report annually to the Michigan Department of Treasury and the local unit of government within which the TIF authority operates.