‘Opportunity zones’ aim to give neighborhoods a boost

TALLAHASSEE — Ten years after the Great Recession, the economic recovery has skipped over some long-downtrodden neighborhoods..

There are now 427 lowincome areas across the state, designated as “opportunity zones” on April 19 by Gov. Rick Scott. It’s part of a new initiative included in the federal tax law passed last year designed to encourage investments in lowincome areas left behind by the economic recovery.

The program also is designed to boost rural areas.

If approved by the U.S. Treasury Department, investors could see substantial benefits for putting money into those areas.

Investors with unrealized capital gains are taxed at a maximum 20 percent federal tax plus a 3.8 percent surtax when they sell. If they invest that money in an “opportunity fund” that helps set up new businesses or helps existing companies expand in the targeted areas, they could defer those taxes.

Keep the investment for seven years, and an investor would pay 85 percent of the taxes due on the original gains. Keep it for 10 years, and an investor would avoid all taxes on gains made from the opportunity fund.

U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Miami, and Tim Scott, RS.C., who led the push to include the program in the GOP tax cut plan passed by Congress last year, say it will revitalize impoverished areas.

The opportunity zones program “would make it more attractive to invest in many of the areas left behind by the global economy, creating jobs and increasing wages for the workers and families,” Rubio wrote in an April 3 letter to Scott.

A similar state program targeting low-income “enterprise zones” for tax incentives, however, was shut down by lawmakers in 2015 after analyses showed it cost the state more money than it generated.

A report by state economists found that “the program primarily captures or shifts existing economic activity, rather than inducing new economic activity to the state.”

Dale Brill, vice president of research for the Orlando Economic Partnership, said the new opportunity zones program is structured differently and is likely to spur more investment than the defunct state program. The incentives being weighted toward long-term investment will encourage lasting growth in those areas, he said.

But Brill also fears that it could benefit the neighborhood but not the people in it, negating the purpose of the program in the first place.

“Economic growth is necessary but not sufficient,” said Brill, a former top economic development adviser to Govs. Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist. It has to be tied to programs that develop job skills for workers in the area, he added.

The crowd at Club Tropicante in Deerfield Beach scattered at the sound of gunfire. When it was over — about 2:30 a.m. Monday — four people had been shot at the club at 4251 N. Dixie Highway.

One of the club-goers, Miya Hall, said she was standing next to one of the people who had been shot and the only thing she could see was “blood, everywhere.”

Hall said she thinks the shooting started after a fight in which somebody punched the gunman.

The four people who were shot, three men and a woman, were taken to Broward Health North with injuries that were described as not life-threatening.

Whether anyone was in custody was not immediately known.

Club Tropicante has a troubled history with city officials in Deerfield Beach.

In 2015, city commissioners began legal steps to have the club declared a “public nuisance,” the first step in getting in shut down. At the time, commissioners were told that during a three year period the Broward Sheriff’s Office had more than 170 calls for service at the restaurant and lounge.