The Tourism Development Tax, the unfairly disbursed revenue on hotel night stays in Orange County, has seen its numbers fall in consecutive months (story HERE). It’s obviously bad news and a reminder to big tourism in the area that the money, which conveniently has to be spent on themselves, isn’t a guaranteed thing.
And this comes as the Orange County Tourism Development Tax Task Force, which has been accused of being rigged, with the matching behavior to give those accusations weight, is wrapping up their work and preparing to submit their pre arranged recommendations to our local leaders (story HERE).
These numbers should be an alarm to us that we need to review the way this task force has been operating and that their recommendations can’t be trusted. Every organization that was given a positive rating by this body has lobbying representation and has already received money before.
They’re also neglecting their duties on this task force by refusing to talk about diversification of the money that would allow it to be spent on things we actually need, like public safety, transportation, and infrastructure.
Our biggest convention rival in Las Vegas already does that. But this task force doesn’t even want to talk about it and has threatened to abandon their duties in the next meeting by not even showing up.
If that sounds wrong, that’s because it is wrong. And another stain against an administration at Orange County that keeps looking for ways to go in your pockets (story HERE) instead of encouraging fair ways to spend the money you earn these self absorbed organizations in tourism and hospitality.
Call your Orange County Commissioners and tell them to throw out the findings of the task force and to hold meetings in your communities instead (story HERE).