TRUMBULL COUNTY Commissioners want control of convention, visitors bureau

Commissioners said their offer and a March 31 deadline are 'non-negotiable.'
WARREN -- Trumbull County commissioners have issued an ultimatum to the county Convention & amp; Visitors Bureau regarding its future: our way, or the highway.
"We want to control the board," Commissioner James Tsagaris said, proclaiming a March 31 deadline for the visitors bureau board to comply with terms it was given three months ago.
The two boards have been at odds nearly a year and a half regarding claim to a percentage of the county's lodging tax and board membership.
The visitors bureau's lawyer, Jeff Kurz, said he was drafting a response and a counterproposal. "We did categorically reject their offer," he said when contacted after the commissioners' Thursday meeting.
Commissioners refuse to give lodging tax proceeds to what they now view as a private corporate entity without accountability.
Going the commissioners' way would free up for the visitors bureau $159,000 in tax proceeds held back since last July. It also would scrap the visitors bureau board's current bylaws, changed without commissioners' approval last year.
The visitors bureau has filed a lawsuit to claim the tax dollars. Its board asked Kurz on Wednesday to seek negotiations.
Tsagaris, however, said the commissioners' offer and the March 31 deadline are "non-negotiable."
"If they come to the table and follow our rules, that money really is their money," Tsagaris said. "We are only asking them to go by our bylaws."
It means the visitors bureau board could not appoint its own members to open-ended terms, would return to a seven-member board rather than nine, would have to drop its lawsuit, return its bylaws to their original form as approved some 20 years ago, and submit its budget to commissioners for approval.
It also would mean the terms of three members who had been appointed by commissioners are now expired: Richard Alberini, Dominic Baragona and Paul Petrich. Visitors bureau board members in February 2004 named two new members who would have to resign.
Kurz declined to discuss the bureau's counterproposal. He said Trumbull and Mahoning counties are the only two in Ohio where politicians control a nonprofit corporation whose job is to promote the county and create an environment where businesses can succeed.
"We are not adverse to settling the matter," Kurz said, noting the bureau's unpaid, volunteer board feels the tax money due is substantially more than $159,000 and could be as much as $400,000. "Negotiations will go on. Either that or it goes to trial."
"A judge can decide whether they are owed any money at all," agreed Jason Earnhart, an assistant county prosecutor. "Put the store back the way you found it and recognize the authority."
Diverted
The lodging tax in Trumbull County is 4 percent. After discovering the visitors bureau had accumulated $200,000 in a savings account, commissioners diverted the bureau's 2 percent of the tax to the Western Reserve Port Authority, which was already receiving the other 2 percent. Commissioners said the lodging tax proceeds shouldn't be used for investment purposes.
The bureau has been operating on those reserves since the funding ended. Commissioners had maintained cutting off lodging tax funds effectively ended the bureau's contract and its claim to the cash.
The bureau had received bed-tax revenues of $428,530 in 2000, $433,000 in 2001, $414,920 in 2002 and $250,000 in 2003. Commissioners and the visitors bureau never agreed on a requested $300,000 budget for 2004.