MAHONING, TRUMBULL COUNTIES State budget provision on bed tax holds promise for airport

By DAVID SKOLNICK
VINDICATOR POLITICS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- A provision that state legislators from the Mahoning Valley placed in the state budget will allow Mahoning and Trumbull counties to impose an increase of up to 2 percentage points in the bed tax and take control over the current 3 percent tax.
The state Legislature is expected to approve the budget, with the bed-tax provision, either today or Friday.
Valley legislators successfully lobbied House and Senate leaders to include the bed tax as part of the state budget currently being ironed out in a conference committee.
"It's a done deal," said state Sen. Marc Dann of Liberty, D-32nd, about the inclusion of the bed-tax provision in the state's two-year, $49 billion budget.
The provision, Dann said, would allow counties that fund airports contiguous to military bases to have the authority to increase their bed tax by up to 2 percentage points, as well as take control away from local convention and visitors bureaus over the current 3 percent county bed tax. There are about a half-dozen counties that would be affected by this legislation, Dann said.
That money could be used by the counties at the discretion of the commissioners, Dann said, but the legislation was drawn up to provide funding to the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport.
"I really, really believe in the airport," said state Rep. Sylvester D. Patton Jr. of Youngstown, D-60th. "It's vital to the area's economy."
The airport, which lost its last commercial airline last fall, has experienced funding problems for several years.
Trumbull County pledged $182,000 to the airport, located in Vienna, this year. But it took several months of discussion before Mahoning County commissioners agreed to give the airport $100,000 from its economic development fund. The county is also seeking $50,000 from the convention and visitors bureau.
Also, airport supporters say the future of the adjacent Youngstown Air Reserve Station, which employs more than 2,000 people, is directly tied to the airport's remaining viable and properly funded. The federal government plans to close 25 percent of its military bases. An announcement is expected in 2005, and local politicians say if the air base is lost, it will be an economic disaster for the Valley.
"We need steady airport funding to keep the air base here," Patton said.
Promise to airport
Trumbull Commissioner Joseph J. Angelo Jr. said today he has no intention of using the additional money to supplement the county's finances.
"We'll use this for the airport," he said. "This will provide a long-term funding solution for the airport. It will get the airport funding issue behind us. It's hard to move ahead with the airport when you're worried about the day-to-day funding of it."
Angelo said he wants Trumbull and Mahoning commissioners to come up with the same funding percentages from the bed tax for the airport.
Mahoning Commissioner Ed Reese wants to see the final version of the bill before formulating an opinion. But he said he has mixed feelings about imposing another tax.
"I'm a proponent for the airport, and if this can help, we'll look at it," he said. "But the imposition of a tax in this sensitive economic climate needs to be looked at. We've got to keep a funding stream for the airport, and that problem has been drawn out too long, but the bigger problem is our overall economy and imposing taxes. We need to look at the $3 million deficit our auditor says we're facing."
skolnick@vindy.com