Nothing in politics gets attention like a pile of money not vigorously defended.
So explains yet another attempt to part out the Haines Borough’s tourism program and the 1 percent sales tax revenues that make it work.
The latest is a pitch by borough manager Annette Kreitzer to eliminate the town’s tourism director job and to contract out the duties of promoting the town to the Haines Chamber of Commerce or other private entity.
We’ve seen enough such schemes to throw this one into the “If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It” dumpster without further comment, but as government is always vulnerable both to newcomers and to privateers itching to dismantle the post office or social security or any other functioning government agency or program, let’s provide some history.
Back in 1987, City of Haines voters approved a 1 percent sales tax to promote tourism. The 1 percent generated a citizen-directed tourism program that helped build an industry that’s been, for the most part, an economic savior for this town.
If it were left alone, the 1 percent tax would be buying over $600,000 in advertising for Haines annually and bringing in enough visitors to render laughable any talk of an industrial mine at the headwaters of the Chilkat River. (The 1 percent raises $645,000 annually these days.)
But politics got in the way, as it always does. By 2004, people wanting to get their paws on the 1 percent money duped voters into expanding the use of the tourism tax revenues to include “economic development,” a phrase so vague no two people can agree on what it means.
That change served as the key to the piggy bank. Soon, borough assemblies were spending the 1 percent tax on replacing harbor fuel tanks, paving roads, paying lobbyists, any damned thing they could label as “economic development,” which is anything.
Also, because of lax oversight by the public, the tourism director got an assistant, who also got an assistant, who also got an assistant, and so on, until less money was going to advertising and more money was going to salaries. One tourism director used the money to send herself to Australia. One spent days greeting cruise ship passengers.
With the purpose of the 1 percent fund divided between “tourism promotion” and “economic development,” borough managers (who write our town’s budgets under our form of government) took it upon themselves to decide how much of the 1 percent would be spent each year and how much would be set aside for mischief.
The result is that voters who wanted revenues from a 1 percent sales tax to pay for promoting Haines to the world are being nickled and dimed by politicians and government bureaucrats.
But that’s still not good enough for the meddlers. They’d just as soon give away our very successful and well-funded tourism program to their friends in the private sector. Under their latest plan, the 1 percent tax wouldn’t go away. But your tax money would go to some private outfit instead of to the local government in which you have a say.
We’ve seen this idea before, on the state level. The State of Alaska once had a robust Division of Tourism that spent around $15 million annually promoting Alaska to the world through advertising, including in the Lower 48.
As a result, Alaska saw lots of independent visitors. They filled our ferries and RV parks and restaurants. Then, in yet another theft camouflaged as “privatizing,” the state turned over its promotion efforts to the cruise industry.
If you’re anywhere in the Lower 48 these days, you’re likely to see an advertisement on TV beckoning you to come to Alaska on a cruise ship. What you won’t see is a TV ad showing the Alaska state ferry or an RV, which aired back when the state advertised itself.
As a result, the state lost independent visitors spread who tend to spread around gobs of money and instead gained cruise passengers, whose money goes mostly to foreign cruise companies and a few tour operators.
(Cruise companies also generously donate to the campaigns of state legislators, in case you missed the connection.)
The people of Haines own the town’s tourism program and that system – despite decades of assaults – still works. It could use some tweaking but it doesn’t need fixing. What it needs is a capable, energetic tourism director and it is borough manager’s Kreitzer’s job to land one.