**minor update for corrections and clarification**

River Falls city council is moving towards adding a room tax under the bizarre notion that such a tax will lead to increased tourism. As inane as this idea is, what is even more stunning is the “logic” being uttered by Roxanne Bump, the River Falls Chamber of Commerce’s chief executive officer. Here at OTBL we’re calling this confiscation tax, “Bump’s bump.”

From Rivertowns.net:

Bump said that, “the extra cost shouldn’t affect visitors’ decisions to stay overnight in River Falls because all surrounding cities already have room taxes.” She’s contacted chambers in other communities that have the tax and they assured her that it should not be a problem in terms of attracting tourism. ”

“It’s visitor promotion funded by visitors.”

The way the tax would work is that hotel and motel owners would be forced at the point of a gun to charge an additional 5% sales tax (currently at 5.5% resulting in a total of 10.5%) on each “tourist’s” charges. The City of River Falls would confiscate 5 percent of that amount for “administrative” costs (the cost of implementing the damn tax and further feathering their coffers), while the rest of the money (4.75%) would go to the local chamber for “tourism promotion.”

Well, now, there’s a brilliant move. You have an idea for raising taxes and so whom do you ask for an opinion? Those who would be paying? Of course not, you characterize it as ‘visitor promotion funded by visitors’, and then go and ask another tax and spend entity if you think it will adversely affect visitors! Good grief, what the heck do you think they would say… also, how do you know what the demand for your rooms would be had the tax not been applied?

A room tax, a school tax, virtually all taxes have little or nothing to do with the protection of your private property from violent attack – the only conceivably legitimate purpose of any moral government’s expropriation of the fruits of your or my labor. Those room tax dollars forfeited would have or could have been spent on a myriad of other items in the local economy. A 5% tax on an $80 dollar room is $4.00 – perhaps an additional cup of coffee, some food, a gallon of gasoline to get you from the freeway and back from River Falls?? Point being it doesn’t matter what those marginal dollars are spent on, but to expropriate them from unwary visitors and redirect them for heretofore undefined purposes is by definition a mis-allocation of other people’s money. Why not just set up a toll booth at the corner of I94 and Hwy 35 with a sign that informs everyone that the required toll is to attract them to River Falls…

With the University of Wisconsin-River Falls lurking in the background here (an entity, by the way, to which citizens from all over the state “contribute” gobs of money already), why would anyone in their right mind conclude that River Falls hotel and motel owners need to charge their client’s an additional $4.00 per night so that the Tourism Bureau can waste it on a worthless University study and city administrative costs? What? A university study? Why, I didn’t read that in the article.. Mark my words, one of the first uses of this new found revenue will be for the morons in the River Falls Department of Tourist Fleecing to send it over to the green horns at UWRF to create practice studies on how to bring tourism to River Falls. Which, when one actually considers it, is really quite novel. I mean, really…. tourism in River Falls, Wisconsin? I can just imagine the analysis… but I digress.

So, this feisty Rivertowns reporter actually had the nerve to query for the opinion of someone who, although not paying the tax directly (which the reporter should have done), would be transmitting the tax (a hotel owner) to the taxing authority. Paige Olson, the owner of Kinni Creek Lodge and Outfitters, said:

“Not having a room tax in this economy would be a definite attraction, marketing ploy and relief to those who are traveling with high gas prices.”

Paige, you’re quite right! When you raise your prices you inevitably sell less, on the margin, of your product or service. We see this presently with gasoline; the higher the price becomes, the less people drive (on the margin). Well, it is no different with hotel rooms; the more they cost, the less, on the margin, will be sold. If Ms Bump’s ‘logic’ is proper, then River Falls should simply cut to the chase and advocate for, say, an additional .20 cents gas tax on the sale of all gasoline purchased in River Falls to use for the same damn purpose – it’ s really not any different. The question one should ask is would an additional .20 cents (5%) added to the current $4.00 per gallon price attract drivers from the freeway to engage in tourism in River Falls?

The real solution is to reduce room taxes all around the area making staying in River Falls, or Hudson, more attractive by comparison to other places. To characterize this legal looting of visitors money as some sort of feel-good contribution voluntarily made by busy travelers and visitors to the area is disingenuous double talk hardly to be matched – yet that is precisely what this idea is, legalized looting. If you want to attract people to River Falls, the last people you should be penalizing by coming there are visitors!

If Bump seems to think there is something that the “community” ought to be doing to change its image so that more visitors would be enticed to come, then have a referendum on it! Ask the citizens if they would voluntarily contribute money for specific projects that would have demonstrable positive tourism effects. If Ms Bump honestly believes in this scam, then she should put her own money where her mouth is and be the first one to advocate for an added gas tax and personally commit to only buying gas in River Falls – never in Minnesota… Let’s just see how much this business babe believes in her interventionist ideology, and when presented to the community how much actual support there is amongst those who theoretically would benefit from any new tourism. To tax those whom you would like to see come and visit more often is utter idiocy.

Our view is that Roxanne Bump should be fired and Paige Olson hired to lead River Falls’ Chamber of Commerce into the future…