Ohio Is abuzz with land bank ideas. I posted about the Cuyahoga County land bank proposal here. Now more people are on board and a State initiative is being promoted. If you believe the reports, there isn’t even much opposition to this Bill. There was even a bus load of people from Cleveland who went to our State House to lobby for it. Here is an excerpt from Aaron Marshall’s PD blog post about it:
A wave of speculators buying small properties for pennies on the dollar is hitting the Slavic Village neighborhood that Brancatelli represents, he told lawmakers on the panel. The sales to faraway investors looking to make a quick buck on small, outdated homes just “extends the cycle of misery,” according to the councilman.
“It makes more sense to start tearing down these houses and start redeveloping it in a more sane way,” he said.
Senate lawmakers will hold more hearings this week with the goal of moving the bill next week to the floor. Legislative leaders in the House and Senate have pledged to act before lawmakers break for the year, Patton said. And the Ohio banking industry seems to be on board — an Ohio Bankers League official told reporters he hadn’t heard of any opposition to the legislation.
The bill in question is Senate Bill 353 - and you won’t get any opposition to it from me either. This idea has made sense since our huge population shift has left us with sprawled out neighborhoods and not enough people to fill the homes. Now that the foreclosure issue is causing even more abandoned properties, this land banking idea makes even more sense.
There will be three days of hearings on this Bill, and the first day was yesterday (Tuesday). Let’s hope this becomes part of the abandoned properties solution.
Now I wish I had good news to report about the film industry tax credit issue. According to Jay Miller in Crain’s Cleveland, our State legislators are not prepared to act quickly on the film industry issue.
Here is what I can’t understand. Can our law makers do math? 100% of zero is still zero. If the film industry gets going here in Ohio we can get a % of ’something’ in taxes, instead of 100% of zero! It’s not rocket science. An excerpt from Miller’s article:
A House committee heard testimony on a motion picture tax credit last Wednesday, Nov. 19, and moved it along to the full House for consideration. Maggie Ostrowski, spokeswoman for Senate President Bill Harris, R-Ashland, said the bill has a good chance of passing the Senate should it win House approval.
Most states provide some sort of tax incentive to lure production companies to film in their states.
Ivan Schwarz, executive director of the Greater Cleveland Film Commission, told the House committee that passage would ensure that a New York-based film company would bring an operation to Cleveland. Nehst Studio president Larry Meistrich told Cleveland City Council last Monday, Nov. 17, that his company is prepared to make a major commitment to shoot in Cleveland if the tax credit passes.
Governor Strickland is sounding like the lone wolf howling against the tax credit proposal. Maybe we need a busload of people to Columbus for this issue too!
Peace Out - 3C
Late Day Update: PD article is here on Ohio House vote in favor of tax credits - and also includes dissent by the Governor’s clan.
1 response so far ↓
1 Credit Crunch » Ohio Senate Bill 353 and The Film Industry Tax Credit Debate // Dec 3, 2008 at 6:35 am
[...] CU*Secure wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt Ohio Is abuzz with land bank ideas. I posted about the Cuyahoga County land bank proposal here. Now more people are on board and a State initiative is being promoted. If you believe the reports, there isn’t even much opposition to this Bill. There was even a bus load of people from Cleveland who went to our State House to lobby for it. Here is an excerpt from Aaron Marshall’s PD blog post about it: A wave of speculators buying small properties for pennies on the dollar is hitting the Slavic V [...]
Leave a Comment