Tom Craddick’s local bill authorizing a 1% tax on the price paid for a hotel or motel room in certain counties lives! After being knocked off the local calendar, after being removed from the regular calendar and recommitted to committee, it has now been sent to Calendars. The flawed description of the counties allowed to impose such a tax (“…a county the entire border of which is located within 250 miles of New Mexico, that has a population of more than 100,000, that includes one municipality with a population of more than 90,000 but less than 120,000, and that includes within its borders an international airport…”) has been eradicated, to be replaced by, “a county in which an airport essential to the economy of the county is located.”
I don’t mean to make trouble, really I don’t, but you don’t suppose that someone might raise a point of order contending that the description “essential to the economy of the county” is a little vague and that there are no standards by which to make this determination, so it is impossible to know to which counties this description might apply? And while I am trying not to make trouble, I wonder if any counties in which an airport essential to the economy of the county (whatever that means) is located currently have a hotel-motel tax with a rate in excess of 1 percent. If so, this bill would make those taxes illegal and impose a 1% ceiling on hotel-motel taxes in those counties.
Just wondering.
