On November 4, Jefferson City voters will decide on a proposal to renew the city’s seven percent hotel tax. The proceeds from the tax will help fund a new conference center for the city. Supporters of the new conference center have claimed it will create 370 new jobs and generate over $100 million in economic growth. Exaggerated estimates such as this one have been made on behalf of convention and conference center projects all around the country for decades, and the historic evidence is clear that Jefferson City voters should be dubious of such claims.

Between now and November, Jefferson City residents who visit St. Louis should drive by the largely empty dome attached to St. Louis’s downtown conference center to see how these conference center promises often play out. That dome was a part of a large convention center expansion in the 1990s. The same promises of growth, revenue, and utopia were all made when St. Louis voters approved a hotel tax increase back then. Now the dome is mostly empty, and the regional body that manages it is struggling to pay for its upkeep. You can also visit the site of the taxpayer-subsidized convention center hotel that went along with the project. You can only visit the site of the hotel, not the hotel itself, because the hotel failed and was foreclosed on long ago.

Like a Cold War general in a Kubrick movie or a carpenter with a box full of nails, local tourism agencies have the same solution for every problem. Economic recession? Expand the convention center. Economic growth? Enlarge the convention center. Global nuclear war? Definitely gonna need a bigger convention center to commiserate in.

The renewed hotel tax isn’t the only public money being used as part of this plan. State tax dollars are being pursued in the legislature, and the conference center may receive local tax subsidies.

Supporters of the conference center plan in Jefferson City would likely say their plan is not as grandiose as a major convention center and dome project in St. Louis, and they are correct in that regard. However, there are plenty of examples of more comparable projects that have failed to reach the level of activity anywhere near was promised. Haywood Sanders is a researcher and writer with the University of Texas–San Antonio who has studied convention center expansions for decades. He has documented how cities and tourism agencies systematically inflate projections to get these projects approved. Sanders has cited the actual and underwhelming numbers of very comparable projects in Overland Park, Kansas, and St. Charles, Missouri. Overland Park opened its convention center and hotel in 2002. Project supporters had projected $36 million in annual hotel revenue by 2012, but the reality was much lower, coming in at under $20 million.

Sanders explains that the convention and conference-center industry peaked in the early 2000s and shows no signs of returning to the success it had back then. With a major convention area nearby in Lake of the Ozarks, a new center in Jefferson City will face intense competition for these limited conference opportunities.

Taxpayers should not be on the hook for conference centers whose overstated benefits, small as they will be, will largely go to private entities. Jefferson City is the capital of the Show-Me State, and the claims being made by convention-center supporters should be met with a healthy dose of skepticism by voters.

The post Jefferson City Residents Should Be Skeptical of Conference Center Project appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

On November 4, Springfield voters will decide on a proposal to increase the city’s hotel tax by three percent. The proceeds from the new tax will help fund a new convention center for the city. A recent report paid for by the Visit Springfield tourism bureau said exactly what Visit Springfield wanted it to say: that a new convention center will generate enormous revenue for the Springfield area. The report claims a new convention center will drive $1.3 billion in new spending over the next 30 years. Exaggerated estimates like this one have been made on behalf of convention centers all around the country for decades, and the historic evidence is clear that Springfield voters should be dubious of such claims.

Between now and November, Springfield residents who visit St. Louis should drive by the largely empty dome attached to St. Louis’s downtown convention center to see how these convention center promises often play out. That dome was a part of a large convention center expansion in the 1990s. The same promises of growth, revenue, and utopia were all made when St. Louis voters approved a similar hotel tax increase back then. Now the dome is mostly empty, and the regional body that manages it is struggling to pay for its upkeep. St. Louis’s local tourism agency thinks the solution is the same thing it always is: further expansion of the convention center. Like a Cold War general in a Kubrick movie or a carpenter with a box full of nails, tourism agencies have the same solution for every problem. Economic recession? Expand the convention center. Economic growth? Enlarge the convention center. Global nuclear war? Definitely gonna need a bigger convention center to commiserate in.

The increased hotel tax isn’t the only public money being used as part of this plan. Other local sales taxes are slated to be used for funding, and state tax dollars are being considered. Tourists, Springfield residents, and possibly all of Missouri will get to pay for this new event space, whether it is actually needed or not.

Haywood Sanders is a researcher and writer with the University of Texas–San Antonio who has studied convention center expansions for decades. He has documented how cities and tourism agencies systematically inflate projections to get these projects approved. Sanders has reviewed the Springfield convention report and noted in an interview with a Springfield News-Leader reporter earlier this year that the report didn’t state how it calculated its room occupancy estimates and ignored underwhelming numbers of comparable convention centers in Overland Park, Kansas, and St. Charles, Missouri. Sanders states that the convention-center industry peaked in the early 2000s and shows no signs of returning to the success it enjoyed back then. With two major convention areas so close by in Branson and Lake of the Ozarks, a new center in Springfield will face intense competition. But I have no doubt that local Springfield convention-center boosters will ignore reality in their quest for tax revenue and city spending.

Visit Springfield wanted a report that claims a convention center will be an economic boon for the city. They got it. As Springfield residents prepare to decide on the hotel tax increase proposal, they should study the work of Heywood Sanders and others to learn about how these claims have been made about many other convention centers in many other cities, and how they usually fail. Springfield voters can also go to St. Louis to see the failures of these promises with their own eyes. Taxpayers should not be on the hook for convention centers whose overstated benefits, such as they are, will largely go to private entities. This is the Show-Me State, and the claims being made by supporters of the convention center for Springfield should be met with a healthy dose of skepticism by voters.

The post Springfield Voters Should Be Skeptical About Convention Center Claims appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Expanding the tax base makes for good tax policy, and equalizing the tax difference between competitors is also good policy. There is no reason that a hotel should have its guests pay one tax rate while Vrbo guests pay a lower rate. The time period of any theoretical “infant industry” argument is long past. The short-term rental industry is a major part of tourism and hospitality, and it should be treated the same as standard hotels for sales tax purposes.

Of course, I would like to see an expansion of the hotel tax base combined with lowering the tax rate, but saving money for tourists probably isn’t the top priority for local officials. I’ll have to be content with the hope that increased revenue from expanding the hotel tax base will remove pressure to raise the hotel tax rates in the future.

Like marijuana taxes and use taxes, hotel tax expansion can offer a method for new municipal tax revenues in an economically sound fashion. However, cities should not just use these new revenue sources to simply get and spend more money. They can also be used to replace other, more economically harmful taxes. These include local earnings taxes, high commercial property taxes, the ridiculous “economic development” sales tax, and personal property taxes on business equipment. (I am well aware that hotel taxes are usually dedicated to tourism promotion and not as readily exchangeable as use or marijuana taxes, but that is a choice that cities make [and a defensible one], not some order delivered via lightning bolt by Zeus himself that the cities can’t change if they wanted to.)

That would be a trade-off that would truly benefit cities in Missouri.

The post Short-Term Rentals, Long-Term Taxes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Hazelwood’s biggest issue is that it is being held at figurative gunpoint by Robertson Fire District, a taxing district here in St. Louis that could qualify as one of the most obscure taxing districts we have. Robertson Fire District probably should not exist. The City of Hazelwood’s municipal fire department should be providing fire protection services to the entire city, but can’t because of a special law in Missouri that limits the ability of cities in St. Louis County that annex unincorporated areas to provide fire services in those areas.

Cities must pay taxes for the fire district to provide the fire services, which they do less efficiently than municipal fire departments. And it is much easier for fireman’s unions to get control of a fire district than a city government (though they can do that, too.). Anyway, Robertson has significantly raised its property tax rate—a rate that the City of Hazelwood, not just the residents within the fire district, must pay. These expensive bills from the high-spending Robertson Fire District are the primary reason Hazelwood is making the cuts mentioned at the start of this piece, and considering filing bankruptcy. From a Post-Dispatch story on the topic:

Median employee pay in the [Robertson] district was $116,066 in 2021, according to district salary records.

In 2021, the city paid Robertson $4.5. million out of a total budget of $30 million, and that does not include the cost to fund the Hazelwood municipal fire department, which covers other parts of the city.

The Robertson contract requires the city pay any fire district tax exceeding 99 cents for each $100 of assessed value. That cost has ballooned over the years, Hazelwood City Manager Matt Zimmerman told the Post-Dispatch in April. [Author’s note: The current rate is $2.41, much higher than $0.99, although the district claims it is going to lower it.]

This story is an example of a special law that is harming Hazelwood, and other cities, too. Cities within St. Louis County that incorporate or annex new areas should be allowed to provide municipal fire services within those areas. Frankly, Chesterfield should be operating its own city fire department; it could save Chesterfield residents a lot of money.

There is another special law, however, where Hazelwood gets the better end of the deal and uses that special authority to stick it to taxpayers. This law relates to hotel taxes. Hotel taxes within St. Louis County are pooled and used to fund tourism promotion, the downtown dome, and a few other things. The tax rate paid on hotel rooms everywhere in St. Louis City and County is 7.25 percent, on top of the normal sales tax rate. But a few cities (four to be precise, most near Lambert Airport) are allowed to have a hotel tax on top of that rate, and the most egregious one is Hazelwood, with a rate of five percent. The combined sales and hotel tax rate in Hazelwood is over 20 percent, and that is unjustifiable. (The other three cities’ extra hotel tax rates are all under one percent.)

In other words, throughout St. Louis City and County hotel taxes of 7.25 percent fund regional items, but a special law allows Hazelwood to charge an extra five percent to just promote Hazelwood. That needs to be changed and excessive hotel taxes need to be disallowed.

Live by the sword, die by the sword. I fully agree that Hazelwood’s primary financial problem is derived from a harmful special law that needs to be removed (the fire district law), but the legislature also needs to address the hotel tax that benefits Hazelwood unfairly.

I look forward to the Mayor of Hazelwood supporting both changes, not just one of them.

The post Hazelwood, Bankruptcy, and Special Laws appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The idea of building new soccer venues in Saint Louis County is not a new one. Multiple projects were in the works during Charlie Dooley’s term as County Executive. But there’s always been the question, which has yet to be satisfactorily answered, of whether Saint Louis County ought to be getting into the soccer business. The new agreement with the city will allow some of the hotel/motel tax revenue the county uses to support the convention center and stadiums downtown to fund soccer fields in the County. Officials claim this will allow the County to get the fields without using any “new” taxes.

For anyone who reads this blog, alarm bells should be going off with any mention of the hotel/motel tax. The fact is, the hotel/motel tax revenue stream drives the most expensive shell game in the Saint Louis region. These taxes supposedly support the America Center, the Edward Jones Dome, the Convention Center Hotel, and Busch Stadium, among others. But the yearly revenue stream from both the city and county’s hotel taxes (less than $20 million) is nowhere near enough to cover annual cost of all these projects (more than $30 million). And that’s before considering the estimated costs of rehabbing the Dome, renovating the convention center, and improving the Scottrade Center. Restaurant tax and general revenue in the city, along with sizable state subsidies, cover the funding gap.

So why would the Saint Louis Visitors and Convention Commission (CVC), which coordinates these expenditures, allow money it does not have to go toward new fields in the County? According to the Post-Dispatch, this may be part of a larger deal. About half of the County’s hotel taxes currently go to pay debt on the Dome. Both that debt and the tax that supports it are set to retire in the next few years. The idea is that promising money for something the County government wants may induce County officials to keep the hotel tax in place—and its revenue flowing to the CVC. In essence, spending money on soccer fields is about being able to spend more money on convention centers.

While the idea of the County going all in on soccer and convention center gambits is unappetizing enough, it gets worse. According to the manager of a similar set of soccer fields in Kansas City, the County’s $14 million cost estimate is much too low, and the plan is “a drag-a-long, tag-a-long boondoggle that will end with county taxpayers funding the difference between the projected and real cost.” Not like we haven’t seen that before.

The post Soccer Mania Strikes Saint Louis County appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Hotel taxes are not an uncommon occurrence in Missouri. In fact, the Show-Me Institute’s Sales Tax Fast Facts pamphlet has 17 entries for cities/counties with a hotel/occupancy tax, and that list is by no means exhaustive. As you can see, hotel tax rates can range from 3 percent in Hermann to 12.25 percent in Hazelwood. In most cases, visitors to Saint Louis County pay the same hotel tax rate (7.25 percent) because of the countywide pool which, among other things, goes to pay off construction costs for the Edward Jones Dome.

The Bridgeton City Council, however, wants more hotel taxes to go directly to them. The council placed a proposal on the April ballot that will raise its hotel tax from 85 cents a night to three dollars a night. I can see why this would be an attractive option. Many people who stay in hotels are not residents of the city/county where the tax is imposed. For politicians and residents alike, getting others to pay for city services sounds like a good idea. However, just because a city can extract revenue from visitors, doesn’t mean it should.

Hotels already pay commercial property taxes and the Saint Louis County property tax surcharge (the highest in the state). They have to pay business licensing fees, and guests already have to pay the city and county sales tax. Why does Bridgeton need to levy even more taxes? Is it because it keeps relying on TIFs? Maybe Bridgeton should stop giving away special handouts and broaden their tax base instead of shrinking it and relying on higher rates to make up for lost revenue.

I highly doubt I will ever stay in a Bridgeton hotel, so when I wake up in the morning, the effects of this proposal won’t be staring me in the face. However, city residents should ask themselves whether they want to approve a tax increase, no matter who it may hurt.

The post Paying for the Privilege . . . to Stay in Bridgeton appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Car-rental companies and airlines say heavy taxes on their services damp demand. With rental cars, some consumers, particularly leisure travelers, are discouraged from travel or opt for smaller cars to hold down the price of a rental, where taxes can sometimes exceed the car cost.

“Taxes clearly have an impact on consumer behavior,” said Richard Broome, spokesman for Hertz Corp.

A survey last year by the U.S. Travel Association, a nonprofit industry group, found 49% of respondents had altered plans because of high travel taxes, such as by staying in less-expensive hotels and spending less on shopping and entertainment. Ten percent of people surveyed said they had changed city choices for trips because of taxes.

Kansas City’s tax levels rank just behind mega-cities such as Chicago, New York City, and Boston, and in a competitive travel market where fuel is expensive and money is tight, every increment of tax can have consequences. I love my hometown, but does Kansas City have the amenities of Manhattan that would allow it to get away with charging a little more for a hotel? Of course not. As Policy Analyst David Stokes noted last year in a commentary about hotel taxes in Jefferson City, “hotel tax votes are often an easy choice for voters, because it can seem like an attractive idea to tax somebody else to fund your own public service or community asset.” But as we have noted before on this blog and in print, hotel taxes are not just a tax on tourists. They also are a tax on the city’s competitiveness, as the Wall Street Journal also notes.

Unfortunately, Kansas City’s abysmal tax ranking(s) probably will not change anytime soon. Not only have the city’s leaders spent citizens into a hole over the years — raising the city’s debt levels to among the worst in the region — but they seem intent on larding up the city’s budget with taxpayer-funded developments, from streetcars to convention hotels to entertainment zones. This is not a sustainable path. The city must change course.

The post Kansas City Among The Nation’s Worst For Tourism Taxes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

At some level, taxing tourists, via special hotel taxes or other means, is appropriate. There is wide agreement that people are less price-sensitive when traveling and will absorb some additional taxes without changing behavior. So, my complaint is not with Columbia’s current 4 percent hotel tax, which is reasonable by municipal standards. I object to the fact that the first reaction of many cities when they are looking for new revenues is to raise the hotel tax. If the people of Columbia want and need a larger airport, they should pay for it. They should not try to obtain a free lunch by passing off the bill to tourists.

The estimated cost of the terminal expansion is $21 million. Is there another way to pay for that without increasing taxes? Absolutely. A decade ago, the Saint Louis suburb of Florissant privatized its water system. Missouri-American Water paid $14.5 million for it. Columbia, which is much larger than Florissant, operates its own water and electric company. Privatizing either (or both) of those operations could readily pay for a desired airport terminal expansion, if one is truly needed.

The question as to whether terminal expansion is truly needed is fair. The airport currently has just 21 outgoing flights from two carriers per week. The eventual goal (taken directly from the city’s own study) is to add “one or two” commercial air carriers and “a recurring flight” to Chicago. I am not an aviation expert, but I think taxpayers should demand stronger evidence of a true need before investing $21 million on the hope of a few more regular flights per week. Missouri has already experienced one disastrous airport expansion. Saint Louis is stuck in a vicious cycle where it is forced to keep its landing fees high to pay for the hundreds of millions of dollars in airport bonds it issued to pay for its new — and now totally unnecessary — runways.

Voters in two major Saint Louis suburbs rejected hotel tax increases (on top of the already high regional hotel tax) by wide margins in 2010. Those voters said enough is enough to tax increases and government growth. They noted the harm the tax increases would have done to hotels in those two cities. If given the opportunity, Columbia residents should consider sending the same message.

David Stokes is a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

The post Columbia Should Refrain From Raising Hotel Taxes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Although the vote has already taken place, Grandview residents should be aware of the potential effects of the tax on the city’s hotel industry.

In the suburbs of Kansas City, people have plenty of options to choose between competing hotels.  Because its neighboring municipalities levy the tax while Grandview does not, Grandview will be forfeiting its own competitive advantage when attracting potential guests.

This hotel tax could potentially lead to less people choosing to stay in Grandview as the city will no longer have its tax advantage.  That in turn could mean less revenue and less business for the city’s hotels.

We’ve previously covered the potential effects of hotel taxes in Jefferson City and Saint Louis County.

The post Grandview Passes Hotel Tax appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Take a moment to check out the two commentaries my colleague David Stokes has published on hotel taxes: here and here.

The post Grandview to Vote on Hotel Tax Tomorrow appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The few cities that already have such a tax will keep it, and there is an exception for Saint Peters. I don’t know why they get an exception, but that is probably a topic for another post. On the whole, this is a very good change that will reduce the constant quest by cities to look for new revenue sources every place they can.

Thanks to John Combest for the link to the original article.

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Hotels in Jefferson City already experience a high tax burden. They pay commercial property tax rates and the Cole County property tax surcharge. The hotels must obtain business licenses, liquor licenses, restaurant health inspections, etc., just to open and operate. Guests at the hotels pay the standard state and city sales tax of 7.725 percent for the rooms, as well as Jefferson City’s current 3-percent charge on top of that.

The question is not whether the current taxes are reasonable. In comparison with most other cities, they are. But the voters of Jefferson City should consider whether this is the time to tell their elected officials “enough.” Voters in three suburbs of Saint Louis did exactly that in response to hotel tax proposals in November. Voters in Clayton, Richmond Heights (both within Saint Louis County), and Saint Peters (in Saint Charles County) overwhelmingly rejected hotel tax proposals at the polls. The voters sent a message to local elected officials that they wanted difficult budget issues to be dealt with through greater fiscal discipline, not higher taxes. The voters of Jefferson City should give strong consideration to saying the same thing.

The private sector is capable of providing a conference center if there is a genuine market for one in Jefferson City. The taxpayers do not need to build one, even if the “taxpayers” in this case are mostly visitors from other areas. The city of Saint Louis used tax dollars to build a convention center hotel a decade ago, an investment that has worked out poorly. The hotel was unable to make its bond payments and was literally sold on the courthouse steps in 2009.

Nobody knows whether Jefferson City’s proposed conference center would also fail. It is reasonable to suspect that demand for hotels in Jefferson City is more inelastic than in many other Missouri locations, because many of those who travel to Jefferson City do so because they have matters that require the visit, regardless of the cost. However, although Jefferson City may face a lower risk than many other cities of losing business after a hotel tax increase, it does not follow that the tax should be increased.

Conference centers are not a core responsibility of local governments. There is almost nothing about a conference center that fits the economic definition of a public good. The hotel that developers plan to build next to the conference center is privately funded, and the backers of that project will undoubtedly direct their investment more efficiently than the promoters of a publicly funded conference center. Private investment in the conference center would have greater positive consequences than public subsidy, and taxpayers would not be on the hook if the hotel fails.

The voters and taxpayers of Jefferson City should think twice about assigning the role of developer to city government. Although hotel guests may be an easy mark for higher taxes, this does not mean that voters should use them to enlarge the portfolio of city hall. Rejecting this tax proposal would tell Jefferson City’s leaders that the residents want responsible, limited government, not government expansion and higher taxes.

David Stokes is a policy analyst for the Show-Me Institute, an independent think tank promoting free-market solutions for Missouri public policy.

The post New Hotel Tax a Bad Idea for Jefferson City appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I applaud the citizens of these three cities for rejecting the proposed taxes. It would have been so easy for the majority to vote to increase somebody else’s taxes — that somebody being any unknown travelers staying in the hotel. Whatever the reason for the defeat, this is good news for fiscal discipline. Now these cities may have to make the tough budget choices that other cities are making, rather than just raising taxes and moving budget items around so they fit under the heading of “tourism.”

The post Musings on the Hotel Tax Vote appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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Unlike most other taxes within Saint Louis County, the hotel tax is nearly always the same wherever you stay. That’s because hotel taxes in the county have, for 20 years, operated through a countywide pool that supports the regional work of the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Bureau, funds major county parks, and pays off the bonds used to finance the Edward Jones Dome.

The pooled nature of the tax also reduces the incentive for city planners to attempt to use tax dollars to lure hotels to their municipality. Outside of a pooled tax system, cities will frequently promise away property taxes, which in large part fund other government agencies, in exchange for the hope of being able to keep the bulk of the resulting increased sales tax revenue. A pooled system greatly reduces this practice, because cities share tax revenues. This practice makes everyone better off, because it allows market forces to dictate where hotels are located, rather than leaving it to government planners.

Two cities located in Saint Louis County are now proposing local hotel taxes. Voters in Clayton and Richmond Heights will decide on Nov. 2 if they want to institute the tax. Voters prefer taxing other people instead of themselves, so I will be pleasantly shocked if the proposals fail. But just because voters will likely approve the tax does not make it sound policy. Hotels already pay substantial commercial property taxes and business license fees to the cities in which they are located. The guests themselves also pay the standard city sales tax on their rooms. These taxes already account for the public services used by hotel guests during their stay.

The hotel tax system is similar to another successful pooled tax for many cities in Saint Louis County — the sales tax pool. Cities within this pool have seen less usage of tax increment financing (TIF) and other forms of incentives. Indeed, all the prominent cases of eminent domain abuse in the county have occurred in cities that are outside of the sales tax pool, such as Sunset Hills and Rock Hill.

If every city in the county is authorized to adopt its own hotel tax, you can rest assured that some cities will offer property tax abatements and other incentives to persuade hotels to move there. We have already seen that scenario with the retail industry in the county. The end result does nothing to increase total economic growth for our region. Instead, it only benefits select cities at the expense of school districts and other taxing bodies.

The structure of the tourism tax pool benefits our entire area. Most importantly, it allows hotel owners to invest in their businesses without fearing they will be put at a tax disadvantage to competitors in neighboring cities. This is no theoretical risk: One project in Richmond Heights has already been put on hold because of the potential tax increase. The pooled tax approach also allows for coordination in advertising our city to potential conventions and tourists. This author does not necessarily like using tax dollars to run ads in Des Moines urging people to come to Saint Louis, but it would be far worse if those ads said, “The 12 residents of Champ, Mo., encourage you to visit their village.”

If cities want to grow business within their communities, they should focus on keeping taxes on businesses low, and not imposing additional taxes on select industries — as the cities of Clayton and Richmond Heights currently propose — or on business in general, as Clayton is also doing with its commercial property tax rate increase. Pooling taxes works for the cities in the sales tax pool, and it has been working for the hotel and tourism industry in Saint Louis. Voters in Richmond Heights and Clayton should consider the costs associated with these hotel tax increases, and the state legislature should consider rescinding the ability of cities in Saint Louis County to enact their own hotel taxes. The county’s existing hotel and tourism taxes are more than sufficient to accomplish their purposes: to advance both the city and county of Saint Louis as a whole, not 92 separate municipalities.

David Stokes is a policy analyst for the Show-Me Institute, a Missouri-based think tank.

The post Proposals for New Hotel Taxes in Suburban Saint Louis Misguided appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Here are two outstanding points made by the Business Journal:

There’s an incentive for doing business in the city. The Ritz, located in Clayton, might just turn its marketing program over to the Four Seasons downtown or the Chase in the Central West End.

For Clayton to claim it will spend the additional tax on tourist-related activities, such as the Clayton Art Fair, is backward logic. We’re going to spend money to woo out-of-towners so we can gouge them? There’s a marketing plan.

You may not be able to see the full story online because of the subscriber paywall, but you should definitely check out the entire piece this week if you have access. There is a name for this type of taxation policy: “Welcome, Stranger.” It is poor policy to balance city general budgets via selective tax increases instead of through spending reductions.

P.S. — There are only about 20 people in the world who might understand the reference in the title of this blog entry, but half of them read this blog, so I figured I’d go for it.

The post “It’s Hotel/Motel Time!” appeared first on Show-Me Institute.