How Calaveras County’s tourism taxes stack up

Posted on January 29, 2013

by James DeHaven

Calaveras County lodge owners’ recent outcry over a proposed 4 percent increase in county tourism taxes proves backers of the move, including the Visitors Bureau, are in for a long slog toward a possible general election ballot appearance.

A poll of 10 county treasurers and tax collectors goes a long way toward proving something similar: California counties can’t seem to agree on how transient occupancy taxes should work.

Some seem unsure whether the tax is intended to be used as a direct tourism subsidy.

Take neighboring Tuolumne County, where the general fund benefits from a TOT rate 4 percent above Calaveras’ tax on hotel, motel and bed and breakfast stays, even while supervisors have historically shoveled far fewer of those dollars back into county tourism promotion.

Or Madera County, where a 9 percent TOT hews closer to Calaveras’ conservative 6 percent rate, despite a 2 percent business improvement district tax already in place to fund tourism promotion efforts.

Others seem unsure of the lodging tax’s effect on area tourism.

Officials in Mariposa, Sierra and several other counties thought TOT rates had little or no observable impact on tourism, although most remarked on at least some political resistance to hotel tax boosts proposed in the past.

Then there’s Kern County, where both voters and tourists snoozed through a 2 percent TOT boost in 2000, one Treasurer-Tax Collector Jordan Kaufman collected for years before sharp-eyed staffers at the County Counsel’s Office noticed the new 10 percent voter-approved rate ran afoul of provisions under Proposition 218, a local government finance reform passed by the state’s voters in 1996.

“I honestly don’t think TOT is something people think about when they go somewhere,” Kaufman explained last week.

It’s unlikely such an oversight would happen here, where TOT rates lag behind the statewide 10 percent median and voters have rejected unincorporated TOT increases twice in the past, though Calaveras does remain in line with most counties on a few key points. Namely the county’s transient tax allocation process, which sees TOT revenues funneled into the county general fund for supervisors to divvy-up as they see fit, a method shared by all but Placer County.

There, according to Principal Management Analyst Linda Oakman, half of all TOT revenues are siphoned-off before they reach the board thanks to a pre-determined split with the county Visitors Bureau.

“The remaining funding goes to the county general fund and is spent to support other county services in the Tahoe area,” she added via email Monday.

In Calaveras, as in nine other counties contacted for this story, vacation rentals and bed and breakfast spots count as TOT-eligible lodging; the county also sides with a unanimous verdict on TOT exemptions for individually owned timeshares.

In fact, only two of 10 tax collectors reached for comment added any kind of wrinkle to the accepted exemptions list. One, in Yosemite-dependent Madera County, charges a 2 percent fee for those holing-up at a county campground. The other, in Tulare County, adds TOT to short stays on a houseboat.

Asked about the inclusion of houseboats under her county’s TOT, Tulare Tax Collector Rita Woodard said the question isn’t why Tulare would apply the tax to a boat, but rather: Who pays?

“I’ve lobbied for years to get it raised,” Woodard said of her county’s 10 percent rate. “Think about it: It’s someone else paying it, it’s not our people – so who loses?”

Of course, a future referendum on Calaveras’ own proposed 4 percent travel tax increase – boosting the rate here to 10 percent – could just as easily hinge on the opposite question: Who benefits?

Citizens for a Better Calaveras, a collection of six community nonprofits, including the Arts Council, Library and the county fair, each stand to gain more than $40,000 annually from TOT reform, which would also pull discretion over those funds away from Calaveras supervisors.

The Calaveras Visitors Bureau – which currently splits TOT funding with the Sheriff’s Office and county Public Works – is a recent convert to the effort. It is projected to win the group more than $200,000 in annual tourism dollars.

A tourism marketing district proposed by the Visitors Bureau last summer – and now backed by staunch TOT increase opponents at the Calaveras Lodging Association – would cut community nonprofits and general fund recipients out of the proceeds gained from a new tax on hotels, motels and even area wine tastings, campgrounds and other special events.

Calaveras Tax Collector Barbara Sullivan has seen similar ballot measures crash and burn here in the past, even as 4 and 2.5 percent increases passed in Angels Camp and Amador County.

The proposals, she said, almost always depend on whether voters feel a heightened TOT could bruise area tourism.

“At a personal level, if I’m going to go somewhere, I’m going to go somewhere,” Sullivan said Friday. “On the other hand, I’ve got at least one person in my office who said (TOT) does make a difference in deciding where they’re going to stay, so I think it just depends on who it is.”

Contact James DeHaven at james@calaverasenterprise.com.