Consultant on P&L sends baffling e-mail

The Power & Light District generated $2.2 million in sales taxes last year. The city was expecting $14.1 million, a figure based on a consultant’s projection.

The consultant, C.H. Johnson Consulting in Chicago, is the subject of this week’s column. I asked Charlie Johnson, the company president, to comment about the projection, which looks pretty shaky in practice. His reply is contained in the article.

Johnson also e-mailed me a recent Yael Abouhalkah column in The Kansas City Star. The column takes apart the claim that tax-increment financing (TIF), the widely used development tool, creates wealth. In fact, Kansas City’s TIF projects are capturing taxes faster than revenues are growing, which means the city has less money to pay basic services.

Abouhalkah’s column is germane to the discussion: Power & Light is the mother of all TIF projects. But Johnson’s reason for passing it along is less clear, given that it contradicts a study his company completed for the city in 2005.