ATLANTA — The effort to increase Macon and Bibb County’s hotel-motel tax to help fund the sports and music halls of fame took a step forward Tuesday at the state Capitol, but still faces several hurdles and significant opposition.
House Bill 993, sponsored by state Rep. David Lucas, would increase the sales tax on hotel stays by a penny. It passed a House sub-committee Tuesday and is likely to face a full committee vote Thursday.
Though some small changes were made to the bill Tuesday in an effort to make it more palatable to opponents, the measure still has significant pressure working against it. Convention and visitors bureaus across Georgia, which are largely funded through existing hotel-motel taxes, are concerned about the precedent the bill could set.
Since the bill would raise new revenue, and split that revenue between the halls of fame and the Douglass Theatre downtown, CVBs are concerned other communities might follow suit, change their hotel-motel tax structure and deprive the bureaus of potential revenue.
With that concern weighing in against local legislators’ effort to increase the tax, Thursday’s expected vote in the House Ways and Means Committee could be a major turning point for the effort to fund the halls of fame locally.
A similiar effort fell apart last year when local legislators disagreed over how to split the new revenue, but legislators seem to have found common ground now that they face a common opponent.
Lucas, D-Macon, and state Rep. Allen Peake, R-Macon, could only guess Tuesday at how the full committee vote — not to mention votes on the floor of the full House and Senate — will go. And Joy Walstrum, a lobbyist for the CVBs, made the same prediction, saying “we’ll see.”
Both Peake and Lucas said they’ve heard from several legislators concerned about voting for the bill, largely due to lobbying pressure.
But Lucas said he hopes the Macon-Bibb community’s willingness to help fund the halls, which are state owned and operated but have taken repeated budget cuts, will win the day.
State officials have asked the area to help fund the halls if it wants to keep them, and “our community stepped up to the plate,” Lucas said.
To contact writer Travis Fain, call 361-2702.
