Joel Burgess at the local daily put together a nice article about the recent increase in the Buncombe County tourist tax from 4 to 6 percent. He tells of his and others’ adventures trying to find out how much of this money goes toward salaries and bonuses. The information is not available, so Patrick Conant, a government transparency junkie, requested information that might contain clues. He was given hundreds of papers in response, and he asked members of the public to help him comb through them all.
It seems only between $1.5 and $2.0 million is going toward executive payroll. Since performance-based bonuses were given, I assume we can multiply our multipliers. That is, not only do the dollars paid in salary and benefits get spent in the economy for direct, indirect, and inductive multiplication; they pay people directly to create other directors, indirectors, and inductors. I digress.
I recommend the article for a taste of the way TDA people communicate.
As an aside, at the commissioners’ meeting where the tax was approved, the new finance director, Tim Flora, used as one justification the fact that the tourism tax had not increased in several years. That was annoying. The tax is a percentage of room rates, not a fixed amount. As such, it rises with inflation. Increasing it implies government is somehow entitled to a greater share of the economy. The argument goes, if government collects your money, takes a rake, and then gives you some advertising or something in return, you are somehow richer. How’s this workin’ out for ya?
