For several generations of Aberdeen city officials, a hotel - motel room tax has been the holy grail to government fiscal solvency.
Trouble is, nobody's been able to collect one red cent from this slipperiest of political footballs.
Visions of sugar plums are again dancing in the collective heads of the city fathers and mothers.
The Maryland Municipal League, which knows a golden goose when it sees one, has two identical bills before the General Assembly, one in each house, which authorizes every municipality in the state to impose a lodging tax of up to 2 percent.
The purpose of this bill, whose House of Delegates version is co-sponsored by Southern Harford Democrat B. Dan Riley, is to give those municipalities whose counties don't have room tax authority, or won't cede the authority to their municipal governments, to get a bite of the apple.
Aberdeen would love to have a room tax. If the state were to grant authority to the city to impose such a tax, the mayor and city council would pass it unanimously, City Councilman Mike Hiob predicted earlier this week.
A hearing on the House version of the bill was Thursday in Annapolis before the Ways and Means Committee. Aberdeen Mayor Mike Bennett was signed up to testify in favor.
Similar legislation was introduced, but eventually defeated in the 2007 session of the legislature. The state hotel and motel association is opposed to extending room tax authority for obvious reasons.
Many counties in Maryland tax lodging over and above the 6 percent sales tax. Baltimore County has an 8 percent room tax. Worcester County, which includes Ocean City, raised its lodging tax from 4 percent to 4.5 percent last fall. Ocean City gets to keep the tax collected inside its municipal borders. When Worcester's room tax was enacted in 1970, several Ocean City officials hailed it as the city's fiscal salvation, because while Ocean City generated more than half of the county's property taxes, an equal proportion of money and services didn't come back to the resort from the county seat in Snow Hill. The room tax gave Ocean City what became a very tidy revenue source of its own.
Harford County's history with the room tax has been tortuous. One of the county's biggest hotel owners, the Hess family, is also one of its most influential from a political standpoint. Aging family patriarch W. Dale Hess has made it a personal crusade to keep room taxes out of Harford County. So far he's been successful. Even so, Hess Enterprises doesn't own any of the motels inside the Aberdeen city limits.
Aberdeen has coveted a room tax for two decades. In 1995, after several years of back and forth on the issue, local legislators passed state enabling legislation authorizing the county to impose a room tax of up to three percent. It would have been up to the county executive and county council to actually levy the tax, but the municipalities like Aberdeen could have received the revenue generated within their borders.
But a combination of political forces doomed any chance of the tax ever passing. It was basically talked and studied to death. In 1999, citing a lack of action at the county level, Harford's legislative delegation had the local tax authority repealed.
One of those who supported the repeal was a freshman delegate, Charles Boutin, who for many years before as mayor of Aberdeen had been one of the room tax’s biggest proponents. By the time Boutin left Aberdeen for Annapolis, however, he was singing a different tune. He blamed the county for its inability to enact the tax, noting the revenue was supposed to be earmarked for tourism development, and said he agreed with hotel owners that the enabling authority should be repealed.
It's hard to be supportive of any tax increases, especially after last fall's special tax session fiasco in Annapolis, but Aberdeen could dearly use another revenue source to help extricate itself from the Ripken Stadium financial mess — a mess that is mostly of the city's own doing.
Room tax supporters argue it's money out of the pockets of visitors, most who travel and expect to pay such taxes. Nobody thinks twice about paying a 9 percent room tax in Las Vegas or 14 percent in San Francisco. Hotel owners argue Harford County isn't a major tourist destination and most of the people who stop a local motels are budget conscious travelers; hence, more taxes could cut into their business. Perhaps.
Let's just say the room tax remains that elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow — one that's been well protected by a few savvy political leprechauns.
But won't stop the majority of Harford County's local elected officials, with their collective tax and spend mentalities, to keep dreaming of the day when they can call that pot their own.
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