Nassau power fight leaves Long Island Convention and Visitors Bureau in lurch

The Nassau County Legislature's failure to meet in 2006 has poked a sizeable hole in the Long Island Convention and Visitors Bureau budget.Because of a flap last year between the county and state Legislature, Nassau's hotel tax, which provides $700,000 of the tourism agency's $2.2 million annual

budget, expired at the end of 2005. Republican state lawmakers and Democratic county legislators reached an agreement late last year that required the state Legislature to approve a formal resolution when it reconvened in January. The only problem is that the resolution authorizing the county to collect a 3 percent tax on nightly hotel and motel stays had to come from the Nassau County Legislature. For more than a month, the Nassau Legislature has been tied up in a leadership dispute, lawsuits and general disarray and has not yet met in 2006 to conduct formal business. Albany is still waiting for the resolution, according to Sen. Dean Skelos, R-Rockville Centre, and Rep. Tom DiNapoli, D-Great Neck, who helped broker the agreement last year.That means that hotels haven't been obligated to collect the 3 percent tax, and for the first 20 days of 2006, they didn't, said Moke McGowan, LICVB executive director.We're in good enough financial stead to withstand this financial difficulty, he said. January is a slow time of the year. If this had happened in July or August, goodnight.Mike Johnston, general manager of the Long Island Marriot in Uniondale and president of the Long Island Hotel and Lodging Association, said it has cost the LICVB as much as $40,000 in uncollected taxes. Last month, John Macari, Nassau's acting treasurer, sent letters to hotels asking them to collect the tax because the county was planning to retroactively assess the hotels once the tax took effect again.They can keep it in their own escrow account, he said. If the tax was retroactive, they would then have the funds.But Johnston said collecting a lapsed tax presents a delicate situation for Nassau hotels. There's nothing to collect, he said.Johnston said Marriott corporate attorneys were researching the legality of assessing the tax on guests before the levy takes legal effect. But Macari's letters to hoteliers have left a lot of confusion about whether they should be collecting the tax.Some are; some aren't, Johnston said of his members, declining to say if the Long Island Marriot is.Meanwhile, smaller hotel owners will suffer from the Nassau Legislature's impasse, he said.It's got to be resolved, Johnston said. It's not called the East End Convention and Visitors Bureau. If you're not giving money to the Long Island Convention and Visitors Bureau, they're not out there promoting this part of the Island. A lot of smaller hotels can't go out and market like a Marriot or a Hyatt.