By FITSNews || With an outgoing mayor and a glorified taxpayer thief among the deciding votes, the City of Columbia S.C. approved a $154 million bailout of the University of South Carolina’s failed Innovista “research campus” on Wednesday.
“Inept-o-vista” – as we call it – has already burned through $150 million worth of South Carolinians’ tax money, with nothing to show for this massive investment but empty buildings (and emptier political promises).
As reported previously on FITS, the money for the Innovista bailout will come from the creation of two new “tax increment financing” districts – or TIFs – which are basically nothing more than massive tax hikes on residents and businesses which are not fortunate enough to be located within the politically-drawn boundaries of the district.
Incidentally, the TIF tax hike will come on top of an 11-12% property tax hike the city is considering separately, which means the “Face of the Recession” is destined to remain a jobs wasteland … sort of like “Inept-o-vista” itself.
Among the “majority” on City Council supporting the special tax districts were Mayor Bob Coble, who is retiring this year, and City Councilwoman Tameika Isaac-Devine, who was busted last year taking taxpayer-funded loans to upgrade her law firm’s headquarters.
Obviously, the city’s decision represents yet another gigantic taxpayer investment in the botched project – which has been marred by costly failures and has managed to land only two small private sector tenants. It has also failed miserably to produce the “thousands of high-paying jobs” it promised just a few short years ago.
Worst of all, Innovista’s so-called “main draw” – hydrogen fuel cell research – has turned out to be a private sector loser, which goes to the heart of why we believe government shouldn’t be picking winners and losers in the private sector in the first place.
As a result of these failures, Innovista has been a huge embarrassment for its leading political supporters – S.C. House Speaker Bobby “Hydrogen” Harrell and USC President Harris Pastides.
Of course that won’t stop them from using this bailout as an excuse to pump more state money into the boondoggle …
By AverageJoe February 17, 2010 at 8:34 pm
USC should have followed the model Clemson used at CU-ICAR. Clemson’s CU-ICAR campus continues to be a success.
Step one would be have been securing an in-house (someone associated with the university) real estate developer…not some random guy from Florida.
By vicupstate February 17, 2010 at 11:44 pm
Any tax increase the city may pass would hit the areas INSIDE the TIF the same as those OUTSIDE of it. A TIF simply determined HOW the taxes levied will be spent. It has no affect on the amount of taxes levied.
Also, only one TIF would be of benefit to Innovista. The second one will go toward improvements in North Columbia.
By JimBeam February 18, 2010 at 7:44 am
All this money spent on Innovista and what do we have to show for it?
A bunch of empty buildings, really nice frat houses, and a basketball arena and baseball stadium that USC didn’t really need.
The problem with USC is that they want to be better, but they don’t want to take the steps required to get there. They just think that if they spend a bunch of money on shiny new things that they will be a top university. You can see this not only with Innovista, but with their football program, thinking that they will become an SEC power by hiring two washed up once-great coaches. (You think they would have learned after Paul Dietzel.)
The City of Columbia is the same way.
That’s the great thing about being in government, you are always spending other people’s money.