Arts The Sleepytime Express
posted by on January 31 at 12:02 PM
Around 50 arts nerds drove to Olympia yesterday for the hearing on state senate bill 6638, aka the hotel/motel tax bill, which funds arts in King County.
(Just writing that sentence made me a little drowsy. One group named its capital-bound van the “The Sleepytime Express.”)
Spoiler alert: The bill is gonna pass.
(Sort-of briefly: In 1989, the legislature started a 2% hotel-motel tax in King County to help pay down Kingdome debt. Some of the excess revenue goes towards arts funding, but only until 2012. Bill 6638 extends the arts funding past 2012 and specifies how it will be distributed. The tax is important—it is the primary source of funding for 4Culture and is listed on the donor wall of the Seattle Rep, up there with Eve Alvord and the Benyaroyas, as if “hotel/motel tax” were a generous person.)
Anyway, Olympia: It’s a weird little campus down there. It feels like a theme park, with its neo-classical buildings, well-tended lawns and hedges, and school groups running around. The capitol dome wants a gravitron:
Clutches of special-interest groups loitered around, waiting for their moment: leather-faced cowboys smoking in the drizzle, wearing hide jackets and “Backcountry Horsemen of America” patches; a group of people with Down syndrome eating in the cafeteria; and, crowded into hearing room four, the art people.
Some of them, like Jim Kelly of 4Culture, wore suits. Others, like Jen Zeyl, wore jeans. Seventeen art people signed up to testify for the bill, zero against.
“We don’t have time to hear 17 people testify,” said committee chair Margarita Prentice. “But, like they say in the theater, always leave your audience wanting more.”
A few people—including Ed Murray—said some nice things about the bill. Prentice asked those who had come to support the bill to stand. Seventy-five percent of the crowd stood up.
“Well, that was boring,” a guy said on the ride back to Seattle. “No controversy, no opposition.”
“No it wasn’t,” a lady countered. “Look at all the people who showed up to support the arts. Put that in the good news category.”
What if they gave a hearing and everyone did come, but the powers that be built a stadium instead (that the voters didn't want) ...
Ok..and people wonder why there's anti-tax zealots out there...this is a prime example of why. Shouldnt the excess revenue from the tax just gone to actually pay off the bonds early instead of funding something entirely different than what it was meant to be for? Now this tax has basically changed into something entirely different and the tax will never go away. The tax was never meant to be permanent.
Brian, you don't understand the taxing mechanism at work here. The bonds ARE being paid off on-schedule, and in the necessary amounts. The 2% for Arts portion of the Hotel/Motel tax is an add-on, that has no effect on the bond repayment schedule whatsoever.
Conversely, if the 2% add-on were shot down tomorrow, not a single additional penny would go toward bond repayment; it would just disappear completely - phffft!
And you know the best part? Unless you spend an inordinate amount of time hanging out in hotel/motel rooms, or eating in restaurants, you're not getting dinged for the tax, which is mostly being paid for out of the pockets of visitors to Seattle, rather than residents.
I must not have understood the wording correctly in the post than. The way I read her post was that in 1989 a 2 percent tax in King county was passed to pay down debt on the Kingdome, nothing else. Excess revenue(above and beyond what was needed to pay off the bonds, basically more than the minimum payment needed is being used to fund the arts). Am I wrong in this? The 2 percent is an add on to the existing tax already or no?
I did try to go and read the bill but wasn't able to make heads or tails of the different sections of it.
I must not have understood the wording correctly in the post than. The way I read her post was that in 1989 a 2 percent tax in King county was passed to pay down debt on the Kingdome, nothing else. Excess revenue(above and beyond what was needed to pay off the bonds, basically more than the minimum payment needed is being used to fund the arts). Am I wrong in this? The 2 percent is an add on to the existing tax already or no?
I did try to go and read the bill but wasn't able to make heads or tails of the different sections of it.
Well, I found my answer on a Nick Licata's web page on an entry from 2005.
www.seattle.gov/council/licata/up/up_190.htm
So basically farther down the page, it goes into some background on the hotel motel tax..
"The hotel-motel tax is a 2% County tax on lodgings within the County. From 2001 to 2003, the tax has raised between $12.7 and $13.9 million annually. The first $5.3 million collected is reserved for retiring the Kingdome debt. Under state law, the rest is divided as follows:
- From 1992 to the end of 2000, 75% to arts, culture and heritage, 25% to stadium purposes, open space acquisition, youth sports, and tourism;
- From 2001 to the end of 2012, 70% for arts, culture and heritage, 30% to stadium purposes, open space acquisition, youth sports, and tourism;
- In addition, from 2001 to 2012, at least 40% of the 70% reserved for arts, culture and heritage is to be deposited in an account to establish an endowment;
From 2013 to 2014, the entire proceeds are reserved for retiring the Kingdome debt.
- From 2015-2020, pay for Qwest Field construction bonds
Granted, I dont know the specifics of the Kingdome's finances, but if there was that much excess tax revenue being collected over the 5.3 million dollar required for the Kingdome debt, why didnt the county just pay off the thing early and get out of the debt entirely???? How much more interest was paid on the bonds because of that over the last 20 years?
@3 - so basically it's a tax on gay people then?
Next time they should provide dream-liners with recliners. You know your region's hit the bigtime when even the activists are spoiled. Thanks to all who f#$kin went!!! ;)
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