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Our state legislature faces many challenges during this session. Among them is finding a way to subsidize the tourism industry. Back in 1993, we voters refused to maintain a small sales tax whose proceeds went to promoting Colorado, and ever since then, we've had to endure new financing proposals.
The most audacious, perhaps, was on last November's ballot -- put slot machines in the state's five racetracks, and guarantee that $25 million of the annual take would go to promoting Colorado attractions. That was soundly defeated.
Meanwhile State Treasurer Mike Coffman has pitched at least two plans. About a year ago, he suggested taking half of the annual income of the state historic preservation fund -- which comes from casino gambling -- and dedicating it to a Colorado travel and tourism promotion fund.
That would have provided about $14 million a year without raising anyone's taxes, but it also would have required a constitutional amendment, and that would have been a tough sell at election time. Given a choice, which would you prefer in your town: the restoration of a handsome but dilapidated old building, or a few more tourists looking for places to buy genuine made-in-China souvenirs of their visit to Colorado?
Coffman has since come up with another way to finance tourism. His office manages unclaimed property in Colorado, and that includes stocks and bonds. After holding such securities for 18 months, his office would sell them and put the proceeds in a trust fund. The principal would be held for the owners to claim, while the interest would go to tourism.
The legislature might well approve that, but it would generate only $3.4 million a year. So even if it went into effect, we'd still hear the complaints that Wyoming or Utah is spending more than we do, and thus poaching tourists who should be coming to Colorado.
So, how else could we fund tourism promotion, without raising taxes?
The legislature could kill two birds with one stone with a new law requiring the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in school. The law the General Assembly passed last year had some constitutional problems (students could opt out for any reason or none at all, but teachers couldn't opt out, even if their religion forbade the Pledge).
So our legislators now feel compelled to contrive a new Pledge Bill. While they're at it, why don't they establish fines for teachers and students who forget words, mumble words or even deliberately omit words from the Pledge?
Figure there are 31 words in the Pledge, 180 school days, and 725,000 students in Colorado. An error rate of only one percent, fined at a mere dime per infraction, would produce nearly $4.5 million a year.
There's another possible source for tourism money -- licensing fees. How many times have you seen pictures of, say, the Maroon Bells in an advertisement? Or the ghost town of St. Elmo? Or a dozen other Colorado cliche shots?
Don't these scenes belong to all of Colorado? And if they belong to us, shouldn't we collect money when they're used for commercial purposes? The legislature should empower the secretary of state to make such licensing deals, and encourage the attorney general to sue people who use our Colorado images for their own profits without getting a license.
And that's just a start on the licensing possibilities.
Consider that Chevrolet is coming out with a
Colorado
pickup. Dodge sold Aspens and now sells
Durangos, and we hear daily of Black Hawk helicopters.
Shouldn't they be paying for the right to use our state's names? And wouldn't such payments provide a steady income stream for the tourism fund, without raising taxes?
That's a start on the possibilities of establishing a revenue stream for tourism promotion, and if the industry numbers are right, the sooner we act, the better.
A study commissioned by the industry and performed by a consulting firm, Longwoods International, showed that for every dollar spent on advertising to potential tourists, a visitor spent $218 in Colorado, which translated in $13 in state and local sales tax for every marketing dollar.
The most recent numbers at hand aren't all that recent -- from 1999 and 2000 -- but they show our state government's total annual revenue at $17 billion, and local governments at $13 billion, making $30 billion altogether.
Thus, if we could find a way to spend $2.3 billion a year on tourism marketing, the visitors would spend $501 billion in Colorado, and the resulting sales tax proceeds would cover all the costs of state and local government.
Or so it would appear, and if we can't trust a study commissioned by the industry in its effort to get some money from us, what can we trust?
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