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The Devon tax increment district tax grab sailed through the City Council with only one vote in opposition (Ward 5 Brian Waters). The representative from my ward, Meg Salyer voted “yes”. Not a promising start, from my viewpoint I guess. She also hasn’t quite gotten into the routine of responding to consituents letters. Being on the council requires a steep learning curve, hopefully she will get around to that.

According to the Oklahoma Gazette, our public schools will lose more than $100 million in tax revenue as part of this deal over the next 25 years. The library system and public health department will also lose revenue.

The Oklahoma City School Board was not consulted about this decision, nor were the boards of the libraries and other public entities that will lose money on the deal. Their representatives gave approval without a public debate on the merits.

Devon Energy was quite clear on the deal. No TIF district, No Devon Tower. Thus we see their commitment to Oklahoma City. Sure, they like this town, so long as they get to dictate the use of the tax money their project will pay. Nice work if you can get it, but it is only available to the rich and powerful.

Tax increment financing is one of the newer tools in the on-going growth of corporate welfare. The yadda yadda yadda is that “these projects are great, they will boost tax revenue, create jobs,” yadda yadda yadda. Well, I’d like to see the signed contract obligating Devon to supply all these great results. Also, an agreement that they will never be bought out by a larger corporation and moved to Houston, leaving us with a big empty albatross of a building.

This is not without risks for the taxpayers. As I understand their plans, they intend to issue bonds to spend this money right away, to be paid for by the property taxes levied on this building. That makes a lot of assumptions about the economy over the next 25 years. As we are in the leading edge of the Second Great Depression, it doesn’t seem particularly prudent right now to incur such a large debt on the speculation that there will be the money to pay it. Oklahoma is littered with the grand buildings of former energy companies that once were on the top of the energy heap, but are now only records in the filing cabinets in Houston and elsewhere of the corporations that bought them. In the event of a default, we could find ourselves stuck with large property tax increases to pay for all this largesse, at a time when few if any of us could afford the increase.

This demand for control over these tax revenues says a lot about the character of the principals at Devon Energy, as well as the character of our local political leaders who rushed this deal to approval. Instead of being willing to be treated like all other taxpayers, Devon demands special treatment. And they’re getting it. We obviously have the best local government our economic elite can buy.

For a supposedly conservative state, we sure do have a lot of “socialism for the rich”. Our mayor, allegedly the most conservative mayor in the United States, has never seen a welfare for the rich check he wasn’t eager to sign and the City Council seems disposed to go along with the various schemes.

Let’s all raise an appropriate salute to Devon president Larry Nichols, the newest Corporate Welfare Queen of the State of Oklahoma.

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Fresh from his vote to throw hundreds of billions of dollars from helicopters to his friends on Wall Street, Senator Tom Coburn is rattling his “I’m a fiscal conservative” schtick with a list of 65 projects he says are a waste of taxpayer’s money. They total the grand sum of $1.3 billion and some change.

Prominent by its absence was the $700 billion bailout he voted for his wealthy allies on Main Street. Not one penny of the trillion dollars we’ve spent on the unjust war on the people of Iraq over the last few years made his list as a “notable waste of taxpayer money”.

Since “not wasting money” is not an option with our present goobermint, I would rather have them waste money on a bridge at a zoo or employing academics at various esoteric scientific researches than on corrupt Wall Street crooks or murdering people in other countries to benefit the political elite of the United States.

The bridges and academics are much cheaper than funding Wall Street.

We end up with a bridge, research, and other various local goodies, which support local economies, whereas with the Wall Street bailout, we are sucking money out of local economies (a/k/a impoverishment) to pour it into the endless black hole of Wall Street Corruption! And the legacy of the unjust Iraq war is misery, death, violence, and destruction.

Like a certain group of religious hypocrites of ancient times, Senator Coburn “strains at a gnat, but swallows a camel.”

“Where your treasure is, there will be your heart also.” Jesus said that, I believe it, and that settles it.

Thus, by his actions, we know where Senator Coburn’s treasure is — Wall Street — and that’s therefore where he keeps his heart of corruption. His has no heart of a servant for the people of this state or these united States.

He will go down in history as one of the political leaders who helped destroy these united States.

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Comes now Devon Corporation, with its plans to build a glittering new skyscraper downtown.  And — a plan to grab off a quarter of a billion dollars in property tax revenue over the next 25 years to spend on special downtown projects to make downtown even more special.  It’s called a “TIFF District”, and it is nothing less than the theft of tax revenue for special purposes.

Through my work with the Catholic Worker House, over the last ten years every month I have been out and about in Oklahoma City’s low income neighborhoods delivering food.  I have watched as conditions in those neighborhoods have continued to deteriorate.  Every year, this city looks more and more like a Victor Hugo novel – glittering new spaces and upscale businesses on one side, grinding poverty on the other.

One reason for that deterioration is that the City’s tax money is being bled out through a death of a thousand cuts for various economic development schemes like the welfare check for Thunder basketball team, and also its subsidy of upscale sprawl throughout the city’s periphery.  Looking at the news reports, it sounds likely to me that this will also inevitably fund schemes that will drive eminent domain pogroms against the low income areas around downtown too.  It will reduce the amount that Oklahoma City public schools would receive from the area.

Oh, and instead of funding projects on a pay as you go basis, they are going to run out and borrow a bunch of money on the city’s tab to put all this activity on a fast track.  So it’s not even a quarter of a billion dollars for city projects, because the lawyers and the underwriters and the bankers and the bondholders will make off with a fat chunk of that goobermint loot.

Here we are, perhaps at the beginning of the Second Great Depression, and we are about to be on the hook for a quarter of a billion dollar tax liability.  Here’s hoping Devon doesn’t go bankrupt, or that they aren’t bought by someone else and have its headquarters moved to Houston.  “But someone will always own the building”, its supporters reply.  “But” if they don’t have money, they can’t pay their taxes, and then the city taxpayers will have to pay the bonds ourselves, and there goes another chunk of city revenue. We may end up owning an empty skyscraper that no one wants, and where is our mighty tax revenue then? Economic circumstances are way to risky right now to make a 25 year bet of this magnitude.

If you live in Oklahoma City, take the time to call your councilperson at City Hall and encourage them to JUST VOTE NO on the Devon TIFF district.

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