Both Democrats and Republicans Love ‘Opportunity Zones’—and That’s a Bad Sign
The Policy Delivers Tax Breaks to Wealthy Political Donors but Little to California’s Struggling Communities
Who says California opposes everything the Trump administration does? Our state’s leaders are frantically embracing at least one lousy presidential idea: “opportunity zones.”
Opportunity zones is the term for the hundreds of places in California—some, but not all, impoverished—that have been targeted for tax-advantaged investment under Trump’s 2017 federal tax law. But the name, like pretty much everything else done by the government in Washington, D.C., these days, is profoundly deceptive.
While opportunity zones are billed as a way to strengthen struggling neighborhoods, that is not their fundamental purpose. To …
