The LCCCA has no authority to take additional tax revenue from the County; it is Wachovia Bank which holds a 40-year lien against “hotel tax” revenue. The trustee of the bond sale (M&T Bank) will unilaterally decide if additional funds are needed; without any action by the LCCCA board or the County Commissioners, M&T has the legal right to confiscate the Visitors Bureau’s portion of the “hotel tax”.
Because of the agreements signed by former County Commissioners Paul Thibault and Ron Ford, there is nothing that anyone can do to stop this from happening.
State law allows the County Commissioners to increase the total room tax to 7%. Of course the County Commissioners will be told that they have NO choice other than to maintain funding levels for the Visitors Bureau, especially considering the drastic reductions in State subsidies.
The County Commissioners can indeed increase taxes on tourists without breaking their campaign promises to NOT provide any additional money for the convention center, since the tax increase would instead go directly to the Visitors Bureau.
If this is true (and it has that certain ring of truth about it), it is simply another example of why former commissioners Molly Henderson and Dick Shellenburger hired an attorney, years ago, to study the complex financial documents of the proposed Convention Center on behalf of county taxpayers.
That study resulted in a list of 55 questions for the LCCCA and Penn Square Partners, questions which were arrogantly ignored as if the people of Lancaster County had no right to the information. They continued to completely ignore the questions yet they prevailed.
The people’s (taxpayers) representatives, however, were rewarded for their honest stewardship by being put out of office; one by falling on his sword, and the other being drummed out.
This is what happens when private business interests, even in a private/public project, are so much more powerful than the people’s representatives. They can (and did) overrule the public and their elected representatives even when their right to know was so unquestionable and absolute.
When the absolute rights of citizens are allowed to be plowed under by powerful financial and media self interests, we have much less of a representative democracy that we do an oligarchy. It is strange, and more than a little sad, that these otherwise very American, Republican entities (and persons) which purport such strong allegiance to our American system of government would so quickly abandon these principles when their own private interests are a stake.