RIFA (Regional Industrial Facilities Authority)

A presentation was given to the Board, regarding Augusta's RIFA project, during the November the 6th BOS meeting. Following is a document provided to loosely describe what the project is.

svp_regional_commerce_park_report_final_with_attachments_and_summary.pdf

Some may ask what is a Regional Industrial Facility Authority (RIFA)? A better understanding can be had by reading this →RIFA article. However, don't get caught up in the “fluff” in this piece, with “the jobs” and the additional “tax revenue”. Most of the benefits being touted are “in the future” and “in theory”.

To try to accurately gauge what this project is, an attempt was made to examine the Roanoke RIFA project. There was nothing substantive to be found. There were no hard facts or financial figures available. What is a hard fact is that active participation in Augusta County's RIFA would require Highland County Supervisors to hand over their authority to a third party (“The Authority”) and that would include making Highland County taxpayers liable for unforeseen costs and unanticipated financial liabilities. The Authority can take grants and loans for projects, create bond issues, and it can make grants and loans to businesses, etc. These authorities can create a financial mess, with taxpayers being responsible for the costs of the clean up. The crisis created by the Federal Government's management of GSE's “(Government Sponsored Enterprises)” Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, comes to mind. Taxpayers, not government, were on the hook for GSE bailouts which were estimated in the hundreds of billions →article.

Government can get their citizens into financial liabilities, but it's taxpayer wallets that bails government out. Let's not let that happen here, in Highland County.