Criticism such as Fecteau’s has been heard since 2000, when Congress created the federal New Markets Tax Credit program, upon which Maine’s program is based, said Julia Sass Rubin, a professor at Rutgers University’s Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy.
The federal and state programs are designed to funnel investment into projects in low-income areas that wouldn’t otherwise receive investments, but there’s really no way to prove whether a project would happen with or without the tax credit financing, Rubin said.
“The problem is the program can’t be monitored. You have almost no way of knowing if the deals would have happened anyway,” she said.