Somewhere in the middle of the article it is revealed that nobody does a cost/benefit analysis - cause everybody knows that is not the purpose of giving tax money to developer buddies:

"That discretion allows for arbitrary personal preferences and allegiances to govern the use of tax dollars, according to planning critic Randal O’Toole, who works out of Oregon as a senior fellow for the Cato Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. He wrote that “urban planners use TIF to practice social engineering, promoting developments that may be less marketable but which follow the latest urban-planning fads,” like the current trend for high-density, mixed-used development of the type that urban planners routinely demolished a few decades ago.

CCDC says that its funding for public infrastructure promotes economic development, but the agency does not consistently undertake cost-benefit analyses to determine whether a particular expense is likely to generate a proportionate public benefit.

“There are cases where we might do more of an analysis of the project in terms of its costs and benefits, but for the streetscape grant program, we generally don’t do that,” Hall said.

O’Toole suggested that one reason urban development agencies don’t rigorously analyzes costs in relation to potential benefits is that their rhetoric about economic development does not match reality."

CCDC has a long history of wasting funds. They confuse an explosively growing region and economy with their own efforts. Downtown Boise (or BoDo as the hipsters call it) would have been redeveloped without CCDC's "help".

Also check out the article linked at IDL's lease with 10 Barrel. It's a good summary of IDL & the Land Board's controversial move into owning and operating businesses to maximize the return on trust lands and funds. How long before Oregon's State Land Board goes down the same road? Or the PERS board?