Senate Finance Committee Chairwoman Alicia "Chucky" Hansen vowed Tuesday to undo Gov. Charles Turnbull’s veto of a tourism authority proposal and his increase in the hotel occupancy tax.
Tuesday's committee’s hearing on the state of the V.I. tourism industry had been scheduled for weeks but Turnbull’s veto of a public-private tourism authority and his decision to increase the hotel room tax from 8 percent to 10 percent made the six-hour plus session even more timely.
The tourism industry's distress over the governor’s decisions has not been lost on Hansen, who has vowed "radical" changes to knock the industry out of a decade-long malaise.
And even though Hansen, a member of the Senate’s eight-member majority bloc, is two votes shy of the 10 needed to override Turnbull’s veto, she remained steadfast.
"Win, lose or draw, I’m moving it," she said. "We should not look at it as a dead issue."
Despite the political rancor between the majority bloc and the remaining seven – mostly Democrat – senators, Hansen may have a shot at an override. While Sen. Emmett Hansen II, a Democrat and not a Finance Committee member, didn’t say outright that he would support an override attempt, he did sit in on the hearing and commiserated with the hoteliers and tourism-dependent business owners outraged by the governor’s actions.
It is unclear whether Sen. Adlah "Foncie" Donastorg, a committee member and non-aligned senator, would support an override.
Chucky Hansen, who repeated her intent to shake up the government’s approach to tourism, said she would also move to repeal the 2 percent increase of the room tax.
"It seems like everyone is singing the same songs relating to what happened in the past," she said. "This is a new direction and new leadership from this Legislature’s majority."
Such statements were well-received by individuals in the tourism industry who lamented the Tourism Department’s lack of a long-term plan to promote the territory. Wendell Snider, president of the St. Croix Hotel and Tourism Association, quoted Bureau of Economic Research statistics that for every dollar spent on advertising the territory, the government receives $15 in return.
"There has to be a five-year marketing plan," Snider said. "There is none. When there has not been a (Tourism commissioner) in 36 months, how can there be any?"
Chucky Hansen said the $11 million collected annually in hotel occupancy taxes, which by law is supposed to be used only for marketing the territory, should be increased to $14 million, although she didn’t say where the additional funds would come from.
The $11 million, Hansen said, "is simply not competitive with what other jurisdictions are spending."
"If we do not increase the money, we will not have any more business," Hansen said.
Of the $14 million, she said, $2 million should go to advertise St. Croix exclusively and $2 million to promote the territory’s marine industry.
Richard Doumeng, president of the St. Thomas-St. John Hotel and Tourism Association, said that other than covering the expenses incurred by the Tourism Department with General Fund monies, the V.I. government relies entirely on hotel occupancy taxes to promote the Virgin Islands as a tourist destination. In turn, he said the government's lack of a larger investment to attract visitors is keeping the amount collected from hotel room taxes low.
"We as a people don’t spend one red cent promoting the territory," he said. "It’s not that 8 percent is too low. There aren’t enough people coming here to pay it."
Doumeng also agreed with Hansen that St. Croix needed extra help.
"I think St. Croix deserves a special fund to get on the map," he said.
