BED TAXES Agency postpones paying for audit

Results of the audit are kept confidential for business reasons.
By BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR COURTHOUSE REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Mahoning County commissioners want a local tourism agency to pay for a bed tax audit of county hotels and motels, but the agency first wants to know what it's paying for.
"I'm not sure what the audit revealed," said Atty. Lawrence Richards, chairman of the Youngstown/Mahoning County Convention and Visitors Bureau. "I'd like to know, but no one has told us anything."
At the CVB's request, commissioners hired an auditing firm in December 2002 to examine the books of all hotels and motels in the county and make sure they were paying the county's lodging tax. The CVB offered to pay for the audit.
Picking up the tab
Richards said he got a letter June 7 from Joseph Caruso, assistant county administrator, asking the bureau for $22,750 to cover the cost of the audit. He said the bureau hasn't paid it yet because it has questions about how the fee was calculated and because it has yet to find out what, if anything, turned up in the audit.
The county assesses a 3 percent tax on all hotel and motel rooms rented here. The inns collect the tax and send a check to the county, which uses two-thirds of it to fund the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport and one-third to help pay for promoting tourism in the county.
Commissioner Vicki Allen Sherlock said the audit revealed that a total of $41,000 in bed tax was unpaid by some hotels and motels between July 1999 and June 2002. She would not say which inns were delinquent.
Business discretion
Sherlock said that for business reasons, results of the audit are confidential and can't be released to the public. That includes the CVB, even though it requested the audit and is being billed for it.
The amount of bed tax paid by a particular business could be used to determine the overall amount of business it does in a year. If that were made public, it could be obtained and used by competitors, Sherlock and Richards said.
Sherlock said commissioners will ask the county prosecutor's office how to present necessary information to the CVB without releasing confidential details.
Richards said any money that's owed from the audit should be given to the CVB, even though it no longer is the county's designated tourism board. Commissioners cut ties with the bureau last year and established a new tourism bureau.
Sherlock and Caruso said the county has sent letters to the delinquent businesses and is in the process of collecting the money.
In the meantime, Caruso said commissioners are working with local hotel and motel owners to establish a standard timetable for them to pay the bed tax. Some have paid monthly, some bimonthly, and some quarterly, Caruso said.
"We just want to make sure that everybody is paying it and paying in a consistent manner," Caruso said.
bjackson@vindy.com