Cincinnati’s Tax Incentive Board Cleared 436 Incentive Reviews in 24 Minutes

Article summary: Cincinnati’s Tax Incentive Review Council met for 24 minutes on June 25, 2026 and disposed of 354 commercial CRA agreements, 41 project TIFs, 35 district TIFs and six urban renewal exemptions, with both statutory citizen seats vacant, after city staff prepared detailed reviews in advance. The 28 project TIF companies that filed annual reports delivered 4,872 permanent jobs against commitments of 8,041 and $1.44 billion in capital spending against commitments of $2.46 billion, figures that combine company reports with department estimates and exclude project TIFs whose agreements require no regular reporting. Staff state that job and payroll shortfalls are documented but were not the basis for termination recommendations except where companies failed to respond.

The Cincinnati Tax Incentive Review Council met on June 25, opened at 4:07 p.m. and adjourned at 4:31.

Both citizen seats on that board sat vacant, and three of five members present were designees.

The Cincinnati tax incentive review covered agreements tied to more than $2.6 billion in projected investment. In those 24 minutes the council disposed of 354 commercial abatement agreements, 41 project TIFs, 35 district TIFs and six urban renewal exemptions. That works out to roughly 3.3 seconds per incentive review.

One qualifier matters before anyone reads too much into that figure. City staff prepared the detailed reviews in advance, and the attachments run to dozens of pages of project-level analysis. So the 3.3 seconds measures the public meeting, not the administrative work behind it. What the meeting shows is how much scrutiny the deliberative step itself received.

Council approved and filed the resulting report on Aug. 5 as file 202602431.

What the 2025 Cincinnati Tax Incentive Review Covered

Ohio requires every city granting these exemptions to seat a review council and meet annually. Hamilton County Auditor Jessica Miranda chairs the Cincinnati Tax Incentive Review Council.

The minutes list five members or designees in attendance. Miranda, Morgan Sutter for the city manager, Vice Mayor Jan-Michele Lemon Kearney, Christine Noone for the finance director, and Benjamin Heckert for Cincinnati Public Schools. Two rows appear under Member/Designee reading “Vacant, Citizen Member.”

State law provides for those two seats. Ohio Revised Code 5709.85(A)(1) calls for two members of the public appointed by the chief executive with the legislative authority’s concurrence, and it specifies that at least one of them shall be a minority.

So the only body that reviews Cincinnati’s property tax exemptions did its 2025 review with no public members seated. Every voting member present represented a government or Cincinnati Public Schools. Why the seats stayed empty is a question for the administration, because nothing in the public record answers it.

Two Cincinnati Enquirer reporters attended as visitors. The meeting was public.

The Cincinnati Tax Incentive Review Voted for Nine. The Report Says Ten.

The minutes record what the council actually did. Sutter reviewed agreement statuses, and the minutes state that nine agreements drew termination recommendations. Then Heckert moved to terminate those nine, Kearney seconded, and the motion carried unanimously.

However, every other document in the package says ten. That count appears in the city manager’s transmittal, in the summary report and in the recommendation table. A narrative section then lists ten companies by name.

Nothing in the material reviewed for this reporting reconciles that gap. It matters because Ohio Revised Code 5709.85(E) requires Council to vote on what the review council recommended, and the two records disagree about what that was.

One caveat belongs here. The minutes carry a DRAFT watermark, so the nine may be a drafting error rather than a substantive discrepancy. Either way, the explanation needs to come from the city rather than from inference.

The Ten Companies the Report Names

The detailed attachment names them, along with the reason attached to each.

Seven face termination over unpaid fees or unfiled reports: NHC-Flat Iron LLC, 830 Main Street LLC, 4538 Camberwell LLC, 1902 Studios LLC, Sycamore Diner LLC, Southern Ohio Holding Organization LLC and SS Mamnoh LLC.

The remaining three are CLC 300 Main Street LLC, Kauffman Vine LLC and Four Corners Cincinnati LLC.

Here the summary and the detail diverge again. The transmittal describes those three as delays in starting or completing construction. However, the attachment describes Four Corners differently. The developer damaged surrounding city infrastructure, the city sued for damages, and the abatement now awaits a declaratory ruling from the court. A lawsuit over property damage is not a construction delay.

Kauffman Vine’s entry cites a default notice, a delayed construction start and unmet loan requirements. Meanwhile, CLC 300 Main’s cites an unresolved completion application, pending LEED documentation and a discussion about unapproved use of the property.

Those characterizations come from city staff. The Four Corners litigation remains pending, and its allegations remain unproven.

The City Says Missed Promises Are Not Grounds for Termination

One sentence in the summary report explains the whole system, although it appears without emphasis on page nine.

Staff writes that job and payroll shortfalls show up in the CRA and TIF reports. Yet those shortfalls “are not the basis for any termination recommendations” except where a company stops responding.

Read that against the seven-of-ten figure. The pattern is not an accident or an enforcement gap. Instead it reflects a stated policy, and the policy is narrower than a blanket amnesty. Shortfalls get documented in the reports. What triggers a termination recommendation, by the city’s own account, is a company that stops responding when asked about them. The Exchange has tracked the same gap between a benefit awarded and a result verified in Ohio’s data center incentives.

TIF Projects Reported 61 Percent of Promised Jobs. All Were Continued.

The TIF attachment carries the numbers the summary left out.

Twenty-eight project TIF companies filed 2025 annual reports. Those companies reported 4,872 permanent jobs against commitments of 8,041, and capital expenditures of $1,435,293,319 against commitments of $2,464,111,731.

By The Cincinnati Exchange’s calculation, that is 61 percent of the promised jobs and 58 percent of the promised investment. In other words, the gap runs to 3,169 jobs and roughly $1.03 billion.

Still, those percentages need their limits stated alongside them. They cover only the 28 companies that filed reports, not all 56 project TIFs. Staff notes the aggregate figures combine company reports with department estimates. Staff also notes that some development agreements creating these TIFs do not require regular reporting at all. So the percentages describe the reporting population, and no complete citywide figure appears anywhere in the attachments.

The Cincinnati Tax Incentive Review Council recommended continuation for every TIF exemption. That motion carried unanimously.

Why the Cincinnati Tax Incentive Review Splits TIF From CRA

Ohio Revised Code 5709.85 splits the annual review into two divisions that work differently.

	CRA-type agreements	TIF exemptions
Statute	5709.85(C)(1)	5709.85(C)(2)
What the council determines	Whether the owner complied with the agreement	Value increase, value exempted, and new or retained jobs on site
Recommendation required	Continuation, modification or cancellation	None specified
Council vote required	Yes, within 60 days under (E)	Not referenced in (E)

State law does require the jobs count for TIF projects. Yet what it does not require is any verdict on that count, any standard defining success, or any Council vote.

So Cincinnati collected the number showing TIF projects at 61 percent of their job commitments, published it in an attachment, and recommended continuation. Nothing in the statute asked for anything else.

None of Last Year’s Seven Termination Recommendations Shows as Terminated

The 2026 report includes a table tracking what happened to the 2025 recommendations. That table is the strongest evidence about whether these findings carry consequences.

Seven agreements drew termination recommendations in 2025. The recorded outcomes read: pending lawsuit, resolved and under construction, default on hold, property sale pending, issues resolved, issues resolved, and issues resolved with fees pending.

The 2026 status report records no termination for any of the seven.

Four of those seven appear again on the 2026 termination list. Four Corners, Kauffman Vine, NHC-Flat Iron and 830 Main Street. Notably, 830 Main carried an “issues resolved” note last year and faces termination this year over two more years of missing reports and fees.

One agreement did end. Oakley Yards Land’s multi-family development shows “Agreement terminated,” although it came off the modification list rather than the termination list.

The Cincinnati Tax Abatement Fee Is Capped at $2,500

Companies owe an annual fee equal to 1 percent of the taxes their abatement forgives, with a $500 floor and a $2,500 ceiling.

That ceiling does the work. Because any agreement forgiving more than $250,000 in taxes pays less than 1 percent, the effective rate keeps falling as the abatement grows.

Cincinnati collected $293,460 in 2025 CRA fees from 293 companies. Set that against a single figure from the same report: the 11 agreements that merely expired at the end of 2025 accounted for $1,203,387 in forgone taxes that year alone.

By The Cincinnati Exchange’s calculation, the entire year’s fee revenue from every paying company came to about a quarter of one year’s forgone taxes from 11 expiring agreements. Meanwhile, 54 companies still had not paid.

Cincinnati Public Schools Raised the Sharpest Point in the Room

Cincinnati Public Schools holds a direct financial stake in these agreements. Because companies receiving a CRA abatement enter a payment in lieu of taxes arrangement with the district, the district’s designee used his time on collections.

Heckert told the council that one of two properties, NHC Flat Iron or 830 Main, had gone four milling cycles without a payment to Cincinnati Public Schools. He also raised the district’s need for a master list of contracts and tax parcels from the city.

Sutter responded that the city was working through the transition of a departing staffer’s responsibilities and would collaborate with the district on continuity.

Both properties Heckert named appear on the termination list. Both appeared on last year’s list too.

The Strongest Case for Cincinnati’s Tax Abatement Program

The defense of this program is better than its critics usually allow, and the same report supplies it.

What the Cincinnati CRA Agreements Delivered

Cincinnati’s CRA projects have over-delivered on investment. Of 354 active agreements, 316 reached completion, carrying $2.2 billion in projected investment against $2.6 billion companies actually reported spending. That is 116 percent of projection. In addition, of the 25 projects finished in 2025, 18 met or beat their spending projections.

Cincinnati’s diversified economic base also owes something to decades of development that incentives helped move.

Why the Mechanism Limits Its Own Downside

The abatement mechanism is self-limiting in a way direct spending is not. Because a CRA forgives taxes on value that would not exist without the improvement, a project that never gets built costs the city nothing in forgone revenue.

Staff also chase compliance. The city collected 325 of 354 annual reports, a 92 percent rate, and continued contacting the remaining companies. Although the city says its exemption agreements typically allow three years to reach investment and job goals, state law separately permits the council to weigh business-cycle swings.

Remote work explains part of the office shortfall. Three companies whose job creation period closed in 2025 missed their commitments by more than 30 percent, and staff attributes that to vacant offices and hybrid schedules.

Where That Case Runs Out

Every one of those points addresses whether the deals were reasonable. None addresses whether anyone checks.

The 116 percent figure covers dollars spent, not jobs delivered, and the same report puts CRA job creation at 4,688 against commitments of 6,229. By contrast, on the TIF side the investment figure runs the other way, at 58 percent of what companies committed.

A three-year window to perform is a reasonable accommodation. However, a permanent absence of consequences is a different thing, and a status table showing none of seven recommendations carried out points toward the second.

What the Cincinnati Tax Incentive Review Left Unresolved

Questions Only the City Can Answer

The nine-versus-ten discrepancy remains unresolved, and only the city can explain it.

A second question concerns the city’s reading of the statute. The city manager’s transmittal states that Ohio Revised Code 5709.85(E) requires Council to act on both the CRA and the TIF recommendations from the annual meeting. Yet the text of (E) expressly references recommendations arising under divisions (C)(1) and (D). Division (C)(2), which governs TIF determinations, does not appear in it.

That may reflect a considered legal interpretation, or a practice of submitting TIF items for a vote beyond what the statute compels. The Cincinnati Exchange asked the city to explain its reading. Nothing here suggests the city has violated the law, and the question is what the city understands (E) to require.

Figures This Reporting Could Not Establish

Several figures in the TIF attachment carry column headers reading CY2024 while the narrative describes the same amounts as 2025 totals. The narrative figures appear above, so the conflict needs the city’s answer.

One abated value in the published CRA report, for Straight Street Collegiate Apartments, renders as a row of symbols rather than a number. Other entries display values up to roughly $91 million without trouble.

Finally, three things remain outside what this reporting established. The dollar value of the Vine Street abatements, the affordability and clawback terms, and final Council action on the four Vine ordinances.

The Public Incentive Ledger

The Cincinnati Exchange is building a running record of public support for private development across Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky.

Each entry will track what government provided, what the recipient promised, what the government measured and concluded, and what actually happened at twelve, twenty-four and thirty-six months. In addition, source of funds and use of funds get separate fields.

The premise is not that incentives are improper. Rather, a resident should be able to see what government gave, what the recipient pledged, what the city checked, and whether the promise held. Cincinnati publishes most of those answers already. They sit in a 28-page attachment that the Cincinnati tax incentive review approved in 24 minutes.

FAQs

What is Cincinnati's Tax Incentive Review Council?

Ohio Revised Code 5709.85 requires any local government granting certain property tax exemptions to seat a review council that meets annually. Hamilton County Auditor Jessica Miranda chairs Cincinnati’s. Its 2026 meeting ran from 4:07 p.m. to 4:31 p.m. on June 25.

How many Cincinnati tax abatement agreements were reviewed for 2025?

The review covered 354 active commercial Community Reinvestment Area agreements, 41 project TIFs, 35 district TIFs and six exemptions under Ohio Revised Code Chapter 725.

Which Cincinnati companies were recommended for termination?

The report names NHC-Flat Iron LLC, 830 Main Street LLC, 4538 Camberwell LLC, 1902 Studios LLC, Sycamore Diner LLC, Southern Ohio Holding Organization LLC, SS Mamnoh LLC, CLC 300 Main Street LLC, Kauffman Vine LLC and Four Corners Cincinnati LLC. The draft meeting minutes record a vote on nine, and that discrepancy is unresolved. A recommendation is not a final termination.

Do Cincinnati TIF projects have to meet job commitments?

Ohio Revised Code 5709.85(C)(2) requires the review council to count new and retained jobs at TIF improvement sites. That division does not attach a compliance test, a pass-fail standard or a Council vote to the count, unlike division (C)(1) for CRA agreements. The city has been asked to explain its own reading of the statute.

What does a Cincinnati abatement annual fee cost?

The fee equals 1 percent of the taxes an abatement forgives, with a $500 minimum and a $2,500 maximum. The city collected $293,460 from 293 companies for 2025.