[CPEO-BIF] Missouri "failed to protect taxpayers in brownfield cleanups"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

TAX CREDITS
Audit: State failed to protect taxpayers in brownfield cleanups

By Jeremy Kohler
Sy. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)
April 10, 2014

A report from Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich on Thursday ripped the  
state's oversight of a tax incentive designed to spur cleanups of  
abandoned business sites, saying two agencies in charge of it have  
allowed conflicts of interest and failed to contain costs for taxpayers.

The Brownfield Remediation Tax Credit created just a small fraction  
of the jobs it was intended to create, according to Schweich, who  
gave the program the lowest possible grade: "poor."

Schweich initiated the audit last year after a series of Post- 
Dispatch stories exposing lax state oversight at tax credit-funded  
brownfield projects. The newspaper revealed that officials with the  
state Department of Natural Resources and Department of Economic  
Development had allowed a politically connected environmental  
consultant, Environmental Operations Inc., to design nearly all of  
the state’s high-value cleanups.


...

For the entire article, see
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/lax-state-oversight-of- 
missouri-brownfield-tax-credits-few-jobs/article_92916903-fdc6-5580- 
bf0e-cb4031044c6d.html

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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