Louisiana Voice

I should’ve known better. Any time I agree with anything The Hayride posts, I oughta wait and pull back the curtain to see what’s on the other side first.

This time I didn’t and one of LouisianaVoice’s longtime readers was quick to point out where I (and Michael Lunsford) were wrong in our (brief) bipartisan criticism of that $11.2 million allocation to New Orleans and Company.

Before I go any further, let me point out that newspapers traditionally carry a one- or two- sentence to front page errors somewhere inside the publication. I feel my readers are entitled to a little more in the way of an explanation when I’m wrong.

The gist of Lunsford’s story – and my all-too quick-endorsement of his argument – was that the Louisiana Legislature was reckless at worse or overly generous at best in “awarding” the $11.2 million to the New Orleans non-governmental agency that promotes tourism and special events for New Orleans.

Turns out, as reader Bill Hammack was quick to point out, it wasn’t a “gift” or a grant at all.

“The $11.2 m is a statutory dedication of .97 cents of hotel tax,” Hammack wrote. In other words, the state collects the tax on hotel occupancy and at the end of the year, sends New Orleans and Company the proceeds it has collected for the past year on the organization’s behalf.

“Every Convention and Visitor Bureau in the state receives that income in their respective parishes,” Hammack explained, much like the proposed tax Denham Springs citizens will vote on in November for hotel occupancy here, the revenue to be used to fund pay raises for fire fighters and police.

“New Orleans happens to be a larger amount because it has more hotel rooms and more visitors,” Hammack said. “I think it is entirely reasonable that we would use tax dollars paid by out-of-town visitors to fund marketing and promotion, rather than the tax dollars of locals.

“Those promotional dollars provide a tremendous ROI (return on investment) for the state via additional sales tax revenue from all the other spending done by visitors…shopping, food, events, etc.”

Turns out Lunsford’s post, which I was too eager to endorse despite our bitter differences on his efforts to censor libraries, was somewhat reminiscent of a Baton Rouge radio station news director who, back in the 1970s, promoted a major investigative story he’d been developing and would be airing in a couple of hours.

When the time came, he broke the story of the “missing” I-10 exit ramps and the unaccounted millions of dollars that should have gone to constructing said ramps. He told his listeners (all half-dozen or so of them) in his best Ted Baxter voice that there was an exit 163 (Siegen Lane) and an exit 166 Highland Road, but no exits 164 or 165 and that he was hot on the trail to learning where the money for their construction went.

The poor guy wasn’t aware that the exit numbers corresponded to the mile markers along the interstate highways.

Lunsford (and I) had a valid point, I believe, about the exorbitant salaries paid the president and CEO of New Orleans and Company but we were both incorrect about the source of the $11.2 million.

I got egg on my face for jumping on the Lunsford bandwagon. Now the question is, will Lunsford admit his misrepresentation as well?