A RECKLESSLY SPENDING CVB OR MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING?

We hope County Commissioner Tim Boyd, state Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, and state Rep. JoAnne Favors, D-Chattanooga, take the treasurer of the Chattanooga Convention & Visitors Bureau at his word.

Keith Sanford, the tourism bureau’s treasurer as well as the president and chief executive officer of the Tennessee Aquarium, said Wednesday he is sure if folks want a detailed look at the finances of the CVB the bureau would be open to it.

“We’re not hiding anything,” he told Times Free Press business reporter Tim Omarzu. “So we welcome a look, as a board.”

Sanford was referring to recent questions by Boyd about the CVB’s expenditures, but his words also may apply to the bill recently introduced by Gardenhire and Favors asking the state comptroller’s office to audit the CVB.

Last month, Boyd said spending at the CVB is out of control, the bureau has no oversight and it appears to have the freedom to spend an annually increasing amount of county money generated by the hotel/motel tax.

Some of that money might be better kept by the county and used for tourism-related items the county itself has to pay for or for bonds to help build new schools, he asserted.

Bob Doak, president of the CVB, countered that the area’s tourist industry, employing about 7,500 people, has an economic impact of more than $1 billion and pays more than $10 million annually in property taxes.

He also defended the bureau’s need to spend money to generate money. Indeed, Sanford said the return is $20 for every $1 spent.

On one hand, it’s difficult to argue with the success of the tourist industry in Chattanooga, spending for which — according to Doak — could climb to $2 billion from $1 billion faster than the 15 years it took to go from $500 million to $1 billion. The city routinely winds up on national lists of “the best …” or “the top …” and has completely changed its image from a sooty manufacturing town to a clean, green, hip, outdoors Mecca.

On the other hand, Boyd, as County Commission Finance Committee chairman, should inquire into CVB’s spending if he believes something is untoward. But since some of the information Boyd has is not public, he said, we don’t know if what he calls out-of-control spending is promoting Chattanooga in New Zealand for two weeks or someone spending the night at a Marriott Hotel when a Hampton Inn would have been just as good.

We also wonder how this became a series of public exchanges between the commissioner and Doak. Apparently, the two have yet to sit down and discuss the commissioner’s concerns. If that had happened before public charges were made, and the bureau’s records were opened for the commissioner, the spat might have been avoided.

But if Boyd has cards he can show, he should show them to the CVB president and to the public. His charges suggest that something more serious than using clear plastic plates instead of Chinet is going on.

We want to believe, after all, his concern is genuine and not that he is overreaching as he did last month when he suggested in a text message to new Board of Education member Joe Smith that Smith didn’t follow a suggested quid pro quo in voting for the county’s top school priorities. He appropriately apologized to Smith when that situation became public.

However, if Boyd and other county commissioners believe the commission’s 2007 decision to turn its hotel/motel tax revenue over to the CVB needs to be revisited, they should put that issue on the table and debate it. Since the revenue amount grows every year — it’s nearly $2 million higher than a decade ago — it’s a legitimate question to ask how much is enough for the CVB.

Should the commission, instead, give the tourist bureau 90 percent or 80 percent of the revenue?

Without a doubt, marketing a city is big business. The CVB has to pitch the Scenic City to a broad range of potential visitors — from a family planning a reunion to a religious organization considering a convention to a softball tournament looking for a site to play to events like Ironman and Head of the Hooch.

Is it likely the tourist bureau could save some money here and there? Sure. Is there any evidence of serious malfeasance? Not that we’ve heard. Is there any question the bureau has helped put the city on the map as a go-to tourist destination? No.

A deeper look at the CVB’s books could confirm all of that.