The Oklahoma State Capital

A controversial plan, thought to have been defeated during last year’s caustic county elections, appears to have been resuscitated.

The newly revived proposal would convert significant portions of Logan County’s District 2 into Tax Increment Finance (TIF) districts. The plan, which appeared to be dead after being heavily debated during last year’s election, drew an unprecedented dark money campaign against then-incumbent Commissioner Charlie Meadows, criticizing him for authoring the proposal.

Now, just ten months after leaving office, Meadows is expressing optimism that newly elected Commissioner Floyd Coffman will reverse course and implement Meadows’ plan.

The proposal would create a series of the TIF districts allowing the county to issue debt and repay it over time with ad valorem revenues, diverted from other government entities and redirected to road improvements. If adopted, it would mark the first use of TIF districts in Oklahoma for county road construction, a tool traditionally reserved for economic development projects.

During the 2024 election, Coffman aggressively opposed the TIF plan, making it one of the defining issues of his campaign. Coffman’s opposition was reinforced by a dark money group, funded by anonymous donors, which chastised Meadows for the plan. While those attacks remain under investigation by The Capital, the identities of those responsible for the funding have never been publicly disclosed.

A 2024, election-day Facebook post by then-challenger Floyd Coffman urged voters to cast a proxy vote for him as a way of voting against incumbent Charlie Meadows’ TIF plan.

As election day neared, Coffman made the issue his closing appeal, telling voters that although they could not vote directly on the TIF policy, by electing him they could make their voices heard by proxy.

In November, after the election but before Coffman took office, Meadows invited Coffman to join Meadows in a tour of the county roads. Meadows used the occasion both to promote the plan and to express interest in serving as Coffman’s deputy commissioner with a focus on implementing the initiative. Meadows acknowledged that while he had called Coffman “a charlatan” during the campaign, he wanted to see the new commissioner succeed and was willing to work with him.

Meadows said Coffman did not follow up after that November meeting, but the two met again recently, and Meadows described Coffman as having an open mind. Coffman has reportedly begun gathering data to potentially move forward with the proposal, and a follow-up meeting is expected in the coming days.

The Controversy

The issue of TIF districts has been litigated and relitigated in various forms for more than a decade. In 2014, Logan County Economic Development Council Director Kay Wade asked the commission to approve a TIF district to offset $100,000 of costs for the Love’s Travel Stop then being built on the east side of Interstate 35.

The proposal drew criticism, as TIF districts are a tool for giving life to economic development improvements that would not occur without the added financial incentive. Because it appeared that the Love’s development would have proceeded without the district, the decision to create it — to the benefit of Love’s — generated significant opposition. The controversy eventually led to an election challenge and the defeat of then–District 1 Commissioner Mark Sharpton by challenger Marven Goodman.

Goodman held office for eight years, during which time no TIF proposals advanced. He declined to support a district for what would later evolve into The Landing development at Sooner Road and Waterloo Road in South Logan County. That development ultimately proceeded without TIF assistance — a result cited by opponents as evidence that such districts are an unnecessary interference in the free market economy and that viable projects will take hold without the subsidy from the government.

After Sharpton returned to the commission in 2023, he joined District 2 Commissioner Charlie Meadows in revisiting the issue, proposing several TIF districts across Logan County’s First and Second Districts. That initiative was abandoned after the election of Commissioner Floyd Coffman in 2024, and after Coffman made opposition to TIF districts one of the defining issues of his campaign.

The revival of the proposal represents a potential political comeback for Meadows, a longtime thought and influence leader, whose ideas appeared to have gone dormant after the commission rejected his proposal for a large sales tax increase and his hallmark TIF proposal likewise appeared sidelined after his defeat in the 2024 elections.