NORWICH – Whether an extra $70,000 per year is worth the hassle or not, Chenango County will most likely not see a bed tax on hotels and bed and breakfasts any time soon.
The potential revenue, based on the number of rooms here, isn’t enough to justify raising the tax let alone requesting it, say local and state officials, particularly in an election year and in a state that hasn’t passed a single home rule request to raise taxes in two years. The tax would require the Chenango County Board of Supervisors to adopt a resolution, forward it to state representatives and have both houses of the New York Legislature and the governor give it the go ahead.
New York State Association of Counties Director Stephen Acquario acknowledged that the amount would go far in small, rural counties such as Chenango’s, and that counties are in desperate need of revenue to pay the cost of state mandates. But he said there’s “almost zero chance” that a home rule request will be approved by the state’s legislature.
“It’s a pattern of flat out rejection because the perception is that the state has over taxed its people. So, instead of allowing counties’ to collect what they can, like mortage recording taxes, 911 surcharges, bed taxes, and flat sales taxes, the (only) alternative is to cut local services and raise property taxes... . This is their position,” he said.
Even though the revenue collected from a county imposed bed tax would be more than enough to cover the current budget for tourism promotion and enhancement, the proposal was barely discussed and quickly dropped at a meeting of the Planning and Economic Development Committee last week. Upon learning that each of the surrounding counties raised revenue from the bed tax, and Chenango was only one of 10 counties in the state that didn’t, Supervisor David C. Law, who chairs the committee, asked Commerce Chenango more than 18 months ago to revisit the idea. Law’s committee hoped, with any luck, that 2013 could be the lucky year for Chenango County.
The idea is hardly new; it has so far spanned four Commerce Chenango directors going back to the early 1990s. But no referral has ever made its way out of any committee, and no resolution has ever been sent to state representatives.
Chenango County Tourism Director Audrey Robinson told members of the committee last Tuesday that any tax increase proposal would most likely fall on deaf ears during an election year. Law, who was unable to attend the meeting, said he was under the impression that there wouldn’t be enough revenue in it for the Chenango County treasurer’s office to administer the new tax. “I thought it wasn’t worth it because of the number of beds,” he said.
Not only have all of the county’s surrounding Chenango implemented as much as a 4 percent tax on hotel and bed and breakfast stays, but within its state-determined tourism region - which includes Chenango, Broome, Herkimer, Madison, Schoharie, Montgomery, Oneida and Otsego counties - only Herkimer and Chenango don’t have the tax.
Chenango County Treasurer William Craine said the treasurer’s office is on board with a new tax and would break even based on administrative fees charged by neighboring counties and tourism figures provided by Commerce Chenango. But both he and Robinson said the political climate in Albany would need to change before pursuing it. They said a whole list of home rule messages get swept into the same bill and nobody wants to be chalked up for voting for tax increases.
However, a spokesperson for New York Senator Tom Libous, R-Binghamton, offered some hope. He suggested that the county board could begin by submitting a resolution.
“If the county wants to impose a tax on something, like anything else, they just send the Senator a resolution about it. For it to become bundled with something (all other home rule tax requests), that’s speculation. We can’t do anything first,” said Libous’s media representative Emmanuel Priest. “It’s more of an issue of getting the board of supervisors to pass something and send it to us. It’s an election year, but the session will go back in January.”
Counties are authorized to collect 3 percent sales tax on top of the state’s 4 percent levy, and under home rule law, may levy a higher sales tax if it is approved by the Legislature every two years. The state’s lawmakers do approve existing sales tax extenders, such as Chenango County’s 1 percent sales tax dedicated to the operations of the Public Safety Facility, which was instituted in 2002.
Acquario said counties ought to be able to renew longstanding taxes through local processes, rather than through “the lengthy bureaucracy” at the state level.
“These ought to be a matter of course by the state’s legislature. All home rule requests have been penalized by this twisted process,” he said.