COAST issues legal demand to City and County on illegal Film Commission funding Formal notice is prerequisite to promised COAST taxpayer suit

COAST Board members Thomas E. Brinkman, Jr. and Mark W. Miller today wrote to Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph T. Deters and Cincinnati City Solicitor Rita McNeil demanding that they take legal action to prevent the expenditure of public monies by the City and County from the Hotel/Motel Tax to fund the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky Film Commission. The letter is a legal prerequisite to filing suit to prevent the mis-spending of the public funds. You can read the county letter here and the city letter here.

The expenditure of these tax proceeds to benefit the Film Commission exceeds the authority provided by the Ohio legislature when it authorized the increased tax for the Convention Center expansion in 2002. In that legislation, Ohio limited the increase in the Hotel/Motel tax for the purposes of paying the costs of “constructing, expanding, maintaining, operating or promoting” a convention center in Hamilton County. Clearly, funding the Film Commission meets none of those requirements.

The Hotel/Motel tax increase has generated more revenue than the convention expansion project has cost, resulting in a surplus in the fund. Rather than rebate that money back to the beleaguered taxpayers of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, in the past month, both the Hamilton County Commission and Cincinnati City Council have voted to spend these monies on a variety of wasteful projects, including the challenged $75,000 designated for the Film Commission.

“The actions of tax-and-spend liberals on the County Commission and Cincinnati City Council are not only irresponsible,” said COAST Chairman James P. Urling, “they are illegal. Fortunately, Ohio law provides a cause of action for taxpayers to recover the funds in such circumstances.”

COAST intends to sue both the City Council and the County Commission to reverse the spending if the respective attorneys do not first act.

When Congresswoman Jean Schmidt was in the Ohio legislature, she introduced a bill that authorized both City Council and the County Commission to raise the hotel and motel tax to fund the wasteful convention center expansion, resulting in the wasteful excesses highlighted by the COAST actions.