The historic preservation tax credit program has been responsible for much of the redevelopment of old sites that has brought vitality (and property tax revenue) to many Rhode Island towns. However, the program also blows a hole in the state budget – $21 million to $41 million over the last three years, and a projected $79 million in fiscal 2010-2011, according to the state.

That, of course, just adds to an already intractable budget crisis. In response, the R.I. Economic Development Corporation (EDC) is about to sell $150 million in bonds to cover the costs of the next two years worth of historic preservation tax credits per the legislation enacted last year that curtailed the tax credit program. The nine-year debt service of some $22 million per year is more politically palatable than yearly swallowing whole the cost of the program.

Unfortunately, it merely puts off the day of reckoning for another group of elected officials. And by pursuing such “remedies,” the state’s officials are only creating a future crisis. Eventually, the state will be so overburdened with debt that it will be paralyzed, focusing all its energy on servicing the mountain of IOUs.

This is just more of the same lack of political will and courage that has landed the state in the mess that it is currently in.

Better that the state’s political leadership had found a way to pay for this program in the present than kick this can down the road where it joins all the other looming obligations the state’s taxpayers face and which promise to retard Rhode Island’s progress. •