Efforts to raise the hotel tax in Allegheny County are ramping up again as the idea received some news coverage today and there is legislation that has been introduced in the House.  While existing statutes on the County’s hotel tax do indeed refer to the 7% total as an excise tax, the newest proposal calls it a “tourism promotion fee”.

The fee, like the tax, would be parceled out to multiple parties and for multiple uses.  The Pittsburgh Film Office, Monroeville, Visit Pittsburgh, the Sports and Exhibition Authority, and the yet-not-existent Sports Commission would all get a share of the money.  The legislation would permit a 2% maximum, but the boosters of the tax increase–or the fee creation–would only ask the County to levy it at 1.25%, bringing the surcharge on a hotel stay in the County to 8.25%.

The Commission itself would be a 21 member board with local, state, hotel, tourism, and sports appointees.  Visit Pittsburgh would get 22% of the revenue to establish the Commission, and the Commission would get 18% of the revenue to construct, upgrade, and maintain amateur sports locations at parks throughout the County (not necessarily at County owned parks), upgrade swimming pools at County owned parks for tournament type events, and enhance the marketability of sports related events at County owned parks to attract events.  Note that since 1994 County owned parks have been a contractual recipient of Regional Asset District funds which come from one-half of the 1% local option sales tax and the County does have operating and capital budgets for the parks.