Over the last couple of weeks various people have indicated that Branson City Administrator, Terry Dody, has said words to the effect that the city of Branson will be using $500,000 of the City Tourism Tax, collected by theatres, lodging, attractions, and restaurants, to specifically market the new convention center. That appeared to fly in the face of the original intent of the tax and the public’s perception of what they were told would not happen as the plans for the convention center were being developed.
On Sep. 11, the Ole Seagull sent an email regarding the situation to Dody. On Sep. 14, in response to that email, among other things Dody said, “The Tourism Tax is not paid by theaters, attractions, etc. It is a pass through tax that they are required to collect from consumers and then remit to the city. How it is spent by the city is established by the enabling legislation. The city council is directing that $500,000 of the Tourism Tax be available for out-of-market marketing for the community’s convention center.”
For what it matters, in the opinion of an Ole Seagull, respect, intent, integrity, trust, and ethics aside, this time, in terms of pure legality, and looking at the City Tourism Tax in a vacuum with no history, he is one hundred percent right. But the City Tourism Tax wasn’t conceived in a vacuum.
Someone didn’t wake up one morning in the early 1990’s and say, “We’ve got nothing else to do today so let’s go out and pass a tax.” It didn’t get from conception to birth without the full support of Branson’s theaters, attractions, hotels, motels, and restaurants, working with the city of Branson to get the funding necessary to meet their mutual needs.
The city of Branson was in desperate need of funding to meet the infrastructure costs of its spurting growth. Branson’s tourism industry needed marketing funds to maintain and grow the economic foundation that caused that growth, tourism. In a spirit of cooperation, respect, and trust they crafted legislation for a tax that dedicated the lions share, 75 percent to the city of Branson to meet its infrastructure needs and 25 percent to meet the marketing tourism needs of Branson’s tourism industry. In that same spirit, they worked together to get the legislation passed and the approved by the voters, initially and again after it was declared unconstitutional by Missouri’s Supreme Court in the mid 1990’s.
It’s probably not too much of an exaggeration to state that without the full support and involvement of Branson’s tourism industry, and particularly its political clout, there would be no City Tourism Tax. Is there a reasonable person that can believe that the support of Branson’s tourism industry would have been forth coming if there was even an inclination that the city of Branson, at some time in the future, in addition to the 75 percent of the tax for infrastructure would, arbitrarily appropriate 20 percent or more of the portion of the tax dedicated to tourism marketing for its own use? Even worse, do it without at least the advice, if not the consent, of the very tourism industry that the tax was designed to help and that was so instrumental in getting passed?
There is little doubt in an Ole Seagull’s aging mind that the marketing portion of the City Tourism Tax was developed and supported by Branson’s tourism industry to be used to promote Branson as a tourism destination for the benefit of Branson’s total tourism industry. It clearly was not the intent to have a significant portion of those funds specifically appropriated for the benefit of any particular theatre, lodging facility, attraction, restaurant or even “the community’s convention center.” That said however, from a pure legal point of view, the arbitrary action of the city of Branson in confiscating over 20 percent of the community’s marketing portion of the City Tourism Tax is legal.
To an Ole Seagull however, the question is one of respect, morality, and ethics rather than legal. Legally, Branson’s elected leaders, and its unelected leader, also have the capability to insure that the 25 percent of the City Tourism Tax set aside for tourism marketing is used in a manner consistent with the spirit and intent of those who worked so hard to initiate and get the tax put in place. The only question is whether or not they have enough respect for the very tourism industry that enabled the tax and provides the source of its revenues and the integrity and ethics to do so.
