A proposed Aberdeen hotel tax has once again drawn stiff opposition from state Sen. Nancy Jacobs.
Jacobs, R-District 34, has played a key role in the Senate?s defeat of proposals to create an Aberdeen hotel tax each of the past five years.
She said the tax would increase costs for relocating Base Realignment and Closure families who stay in hotels while house hunting and for Army workers visiting Aberdeen Proving Ground.
And, Jacobs said, state residents have had enough of tax increases.
“Maryland saw the largest tax increase in state history begin on New Year?s Day, so the solution should not be more taxes,” she said.
City Councilmen Mike Hiob and Ron Kupferman began their push again this year for the hotel tax, which they say would help the city reduce its property tax rate by as much as 10 cents.
The property tax increased to 73.5 cents per $100 of assessed value two years ago to balance a budget burdened by yearly deficits at the city-owned Ripken Stadium and growing water and sewer costs.
Jacobs, a member of the state?s Tourism Development Board, said hotel taxes should go toward promoting local tourism.
“A hotel tax, if implemented, should not be to make up for deficits created by poor and irresponsible decision making by politicians,” she said.
Jacobs said that while the councilmen cited a Harford hotel occupancy rate between 70 and 80 percent, the Maryland Hotel and Lodging Association put the rate between 60 percent and 65 percent.
“We?re adamantly opposed” to an Aberdeen hotel tax, said Mary Jo McCulloch, president of the Maryland Hotel & Lodging Association.
“Throughout the state of Maryland, millions in hotel taxes are collected, and less than a quarter gets reinvested into marketing and tourism.”
McCulloch said her association would support hotel taxes only if all the proceeds went toward tourism promotion. When the taxes go into the government?sgeneral fund, as would be the case in Aberdeen, tourists end up paying for benefits like roads and schools, she said.
Hotels and motels already make their contributions through their property taxes, McCulloch said.
Kupferman, who says he has sought a hotel tax since his early days on the council in the early 1980s, said the city was working on a new approach to win over Senate support, but he declined to elaborate.
