[CPEO-BIF] Minnesota brownfields funding

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Revived fund will help brownfield development

by Don Jacobson
Minneapolis Star Tribune (MN)
June 26, 2014

Developers, government officials and industry professionals working  
to transform contaminated brownfields into new housing and commercial  
projects got an upbeat assessment on the future of state funding from  
key legislators this week in Minneapolis.

The mood at the "State of Brownfields" event, staged by the nonprofit  
group Minnesota Brownfields, was more positive after the Legislature  
moved in 2013 to restore the Environmental Response Fund (ERF), used  
by Hennepin and Ramsey counties to clean up sites via a tax on  
property transactions. The fund had been repealed in 2012.

Under its provisions, the two counties assess mortgage registry and  
deed fees at 0.01 percent of a property's assessed value to pay for  
environmental cleanup projects. The program, however, was opposed by  
the residential real estate industry, which argued that the fees were  
a burden to financially strapped home buyers at a time when the home  
market was struggling to recover.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.startribune.com/business/264794371.html#hKCH16L7zHh7zusC.97

--

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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