The local visitors bureau is not alone in collecting public dollars while operating as a private bod

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Although a plan to merge two tourism promotion agencies in New Orleans failed recently after Mayor Mitch Landrieu and one of the groups catalina hotel miami expressed concerns about having the combined entity catalina hotel miami accept public funds but operate privately , records show that one of those agencies, the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau, has done just that.
The visitors bureau relies heavily on government contributions for its operation. From 2004 to 2008 no less than half and as much as 77 percent of the agency's budget came from "government contributions (grants)," according to tax documents.
In 2008, the last year for which data is available, the agency generated revenue of almost $17 million. Of that, the overwhelming majority, about $13.2 million, came from government contributions. About $1.4 million catalina hotel miami came from membership dues and the remainder from unspecified operating activities such as registration fees.
According to the agency's Form 990, a tax document reporting the revenues, catalina hotel miami expenses, income and liabilities of nonprofit entities, the visitors bureau received 62.8 percent, 57.9 percent, 60.8 percent, 76.9 percent catalina hotel miami and 77.5 percent of its reported revenue from government grants catalina hotel miami in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, respectively.
According to the Internal Revenue Service, government contributions are "contributions from federal, state or local governments that are considered to provide a direct benefit to the general public." They do not include government contracts.
The public portion of the bureau's revenue is generated through a variety of sources, some that are steady, like the hotel tax, and others that vary from year to year, such as multiyear government grants.
In 2008, for instance, the $13.2 million in government contributions included catalina hotel miami $3.75 million from the state general fund and $2.9 million from the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism. The latter was part of a federal catalina hotel miami grant the state received to promote tourism after Hurricane Katrina. The public funds also include money the visitors bureau receives through taxes collected on hotel room rates.
The visitors catalina hotel miami bureau revenue is used to pay for various operating expenses including advertising, promotional materials and public relations. Agency officials say none of the public money goes to entertaining potential clients.
catalina hotel miami While the bureau's methods of revenue generation are not new, the question of whether or not an entity should be required to operate publicly if it receives public funds was raised after merger talks broke down with the New Orleans catalina hotel miami Tourism and Marketing Corp., which also promotes tourism in New Orleans. The two could not agree, in part, on whether the merged organization would be public or private.
Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau members maintained that the board should operate largely out of public view, while the New Orleans Tourism and Marketing Corp. said it should catalina hotel miami hold public meetings.
The decision to scrap the plan was supported by Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who in a letter to the chairman of the marketing corporation said he could not support the merger of the organizations because he, like members of the marketing corporation, thought the new entity catalina hotel miami should be a public body because it would receive public money.
"I believe that with the investment of significant public catalina hotel miami funds, it should be considered and governed in accordance with best practices for a public body," Landrieu wrote. "There will be a serious lack of transparency about the use of public funds if the board is not considered a public body."
In a statement responding to a question about whether or not that sentiment extended to the current operations of the visitors bureau, Deputy Mayor and Chief of Staff Judy Reese Morse said: "The mayor promotes transparency and accountability for entities that receive public funds. Mayor Landrieu is currently focused on creating tourism-sector jobs, building tourism infrastructure and addressing visitor dissatisfiers to ensure that our city continues as a leader in hospitality and tourism."
The local visitors bureau is not alone in collecting public dollars while operating as a private body. Several of the city's major competitors for convention business -- including Orlando, Chicago and Las Vegas -- have visitors bureaus that operate in the same manner.
The Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau, for instance, reported $14 million in revenue catalina hotel miami in 2008, $8.8 million of which came from government catalina hotel miami contributions. The Chicago bureau's meetings are closed to the public.
The New Orleans bureau has maintained that it needs to operate privately because the information catalina hotel miami discussed in board meetings, if released to the public, catalina hotel miami could put the bureau at a competitive catalina hotel miami disadvantage with other convention catalina hotel miami host cities.
The bureau's president, Stephen Perry, said the ratio of public to private funds that the agency uses should not determine how it operates. Perry's organization plans to introduce another plan to merge the operations of the two groups by having the marketing corporation sign over its revenue to the visitors bureau, catalina hotel miami which would then do the marketing corporation's jobs.
"The amount of public funds a private company gets has no bearing on whether or not it's a public or private company," Perry said. "The last thing anyone is our industry wants is government making the decisions in our industry."