Shell Game, COMIDA Tax breaks for Hotels don’t result in revenue to Monroe County.
No wonder we have a huge County budget gap.
Check out this piece by David Cay Johnston in last week’s City News.
Ask our Monroe County government a simple question, and the government will pay a lawyer to decide whether to answer.
See - he is trying to figure out
How much does Monroe County collect from the 6 percent hotel tax? (The tax is a levy that the county budget says is “to promote and enhance tourism.”)
Let’s just say the County is unable or unwilling to provide Mr Johnston an answer. It isn’t part of the budget, may even require a Freedom of Information request.
Contrast this with how Brooks endlessly touts tourism as a boon to local taxpayers. Earlier this month, the tourism-promotion agency VisitRochester released its annual visitor spending figures. Brooks boasted that they “reinforce what we’ve been saying all along… that tourism is an economic engine.”
But when adjusted for inflation, the data show a sputtering engine. Total spending by visitors in 2008 dropped 3.9 percent from 2007. Lodging revenue fell 5.6 percent.
What, revenue is falling? What is worse is that Mr Johnston points out COMIDA is giving various hotels TAX BREAKS so new hotels will be built presumably contributing to the glut of rooms on the market.
Yet in March, COMIDA, the county’s industrial-development agency, voted multi-million-dollar tax breaks for Steven Congel of Denver, who wants to demolish part of Medley Centre to build a residential, retail, and hotel complex, adding perhaps 450 hotel rooms. Congel is part of the billionaire family that owns Carousel Mall in Syracuse.
With hotel revenues nearly flat since 1990, with 41 percent of rooms going begging and a new Hampton Inn about to open near Medley Centre, why would anyone want to build hotels here? Oh, that’s right; Congel can hold the land for next to nothing in taxes (while the rest of us make up the difference) and then get tax-advantaged financing thanks to COMIDA.
let’s not forget the Homewood Suites in Greece and all the rest.
As I’ve said before we have plenty of rooms in Rochester - no need to build more and, as David Cay Johnston points out, no need for tax breaks when we can’t even fill them let alone figure out how much revenue Monroe County gains.
Related posts:
- Plenty of rooms at the Inn - We don’t need more Hotels in Rochester.
- Sales Tax revenue is up - Monroe County still missing out
- You say there are no customers for a new hotel? Here, build one anyway. Actually, what the heck, build TWO hotels.
- Medley Centre Proposal - can COMIDA be far behind?
- You already knew this, but the others are catching up: Medley Centre deal stinks
COMIDA has always been about moving jobs (often from less powerful areas to more powerful ones like Greece and Gates). It has worked I think to further impoverish the city and move jobs out to the suburbs or to politically connected friends
[...] County can’t tell us how much tax revenue is made from the County Hotel tax. We discover (again) that the tax breaks given to hotels are [...]