Travis County Commissioners Court
January 18, 2005
Item 34
34 is to consider and take appropriate action on the issues related to the 79th Texas legislative session, including, s, issues and bills of interest to traik. And b, process through which or by which Travis County will decide what action to take on various bills, including the manner in which elected and appointed county officials should obtain court approval to use legislative consultants through the legislative process. This describes your question to the court. You were on a first or b?
>> it's up to you, judge.
>> then let's take a. Is joe gieselman around. I think he had legislation he wanted to draw our attention to. Okay.
>> is a the summary of the legislative --
>> bills of interest. That broad enough?
>> that's good. Let me say I’m happy to be here on this January 18th, which is a memorable date for me because 52 years ago my parents welcomed me into this world. I thought i'd just mention that for them if they happen to be watching here in Austin.
>> was it as cold as overcast that day as it is today, bob?
>> where I was born, yes, it was very cold. In fact, there was probably snow on the ground.
>> i've given you a handout that has five pages that summarize the bills that you have asked us to work on this session. And what i'll do, let me just generally say that of the 13 bills that you have asked us to file and work on, we are in the process of -- we have a first draft of 11 of those bills. And we are reworking some of the other drafts and waiting on the other two, but none of those bills have been filed yet, so we don't have numbers to give you. But if you would like, though, I will -- I would like to go through several of these where we don't have -- where we have some new information for you. And then allow you to ask any questions that you may have. On the very first page, initial number 1 is the county hotel occupancy tax which Commissioner dais has brought forward -- Davis has brought fard. And after our last meeting when you endorsed these, Commissioner Davis, Commissioner Sonleitner and myself met with the Texas hotel and lodging association as well as representatives from the hotel association, and Commissioner Davis, do you want to comment on that now?
>> I can go ahead and comment on it. And as you know, I did sent in information out on the progress of that meeting that we had. And from that, of course, the hotel-motel association, lobbying association, they do not support that particular bill. Even though it wouldn't be any cost to the Travis County taxpayer, they felt that persons coming here from out of state or wherever they are coming from into Travis County, using their particular hotel and motels would be -- would hurt their business, per se, because at that point the two cents added on to the existing 17 cents that exists now for Austin would cause hardship because at that point, I guess it would be equal to the highest motel-motel bed tax in the state of Texas, which would be equal to houston. Of course, after further review, I received some additional information after we looked at the conventions bureau and looked at their particular budget for advertising because the main focus on this particular increase was to look at ways to advertise and market for tourism here in all of Travis County. And, of course, having that broken down and having pbo to look at that and break that particular budget down, we found out that there's some $317,000 that's being utilized for advertising and marketing for the -- for this particular -- for Austin and also Travis County, which is very minimal to the advertising efforts that take place in other parts of the state and other parts of the country. They are really putting a lot of money into their advertising scheme of things to help boost that tourism, which helps boost the economy. So that was the intent of this particular proposed bill. I did get a chance to share that with some of the legislators, our elected legislative body, because I don't know where it's going to go, but with the lobby strongly opposing this particular bill, I just don't feel that it may go anywhere. I'd like the taxpayers of Travis County to understand this, that this particular proposal that I brought forth was just basically in the interest of increasing the amount of money that we could spend on tourism, which in my opinion would also boost the business community, and of course, give them business. And it would be no cost to the taxpayers here in Travis County because when a person comes in from out of town or something like that and pays the hotel-motel bed tax, occupancy tax, it's the same as if we have to go and we visit other counties and stay? Other cities, we also have to pay a tax and it's no cost to those folks. That's basically where I was coming from is that with this strong opposition, I feel it may not stand a chance to pass this particular legislation, but there are some alternatives other than this that we're reviewing because the bottom line is how can we promote tourism here in Travis County because of the fact that we as Travis County do bring a lot to the table when we have persons that come in, an entities that come in and use the expo center for an example. I think that Commissioner Sonleitner talks about the tournaments and things like that. We actually fill up with the hotels. The star of Texas rodeo, things like that. And yet we don't get anything in return for helping the hotel-motel bed tax industry. And of course, I just felt that how could we promote and advertise Travis County's interests also. And of course, $317,000 that the city of Austin has in its budget when it deals with this convention bureau is really in my opinion not enough revenue. And again, taxpayers, I would like you to know that it wouldn't be coming out of the local taxpayers' pockets, it would be people coming here to visit our city and tour our city, and also the county. We have a lot of --
>> so do we leave it on or take it off?
>> judge, I think we can pull it down.
>> right, at this point, but there are alternatives that I would like to bring back later and it will be brought back next week as far as a way of making -- just pull it.
>> we'll look at the other options later.
>> i've got another option that we can consider as far as advertising. Thank you.
>> in the interest of your time, unless you have questions on any of these specific ones, we --
>> we may need to think about number 2, no, we didn't, that wasn't 2, that was 3.
>> on 3, 4 and 5, we met with the division of the Texas department of criminal justice and we also met with the chair woman of the board of pardon and paroles. And staff on 3, 4 and 5, they are sort of regrouping and reconsidering what they think would be the best thing to bring to you to recommend as to what would be effective and what we might have a chance of actually doing this session. So on those, they're sort of on hold. And I talked to mike this morning. He says he hopes to hav something to you this week on his recommendation.
>> so we hope to discuss those next week?
>> that's right.
>> 3, 4 and 5.
>> correct.
>> because time is of the essence now.
>> that's correct. And we hope to have most of these filed within the next seven to 10 days and move forward on them.
>> okay.
>> and judge, that would take us to the last two pages of the process, if you'd like to discuss that. And there are two pages. The first one deals with a suggested format for other Travis County elected officials bringing legislative recommendations to you, and then the last page is a recommended format for staff of Travis County bringing legislative recommendations to you. And to summarize, both of them say that what they should do is if they have something they want to bring to you to get it on the Tuesday voting session through Commissioner Sonleitner's office, and then to provide background, which will be a full analysis, a fiscal analysis, and a recommendation for action by you. And then to come on Tuesday and present it to you, providing the staff and us with background prior to the Tuesday vote. And that's the basic framework.
>> okay.
>> and as you know, what has happened in the past, you have just decided on a case-by-case basis or a bill by bill basis how you want the legislative consulting team to handle that, either to actively work for the passage of the defeat of the legislation or to register on record your support or opposition of the bill. And you've always done that on a week by week, bill by bill basis.
>> we were also hoping to get some kind of consistency in terms of how to assemble the book for you all. Our office is very happy again to help coordinate this. But there's an awful lot of work that's involved. Our office, barbara was invaluable last session of just pulling altogether. And if we don't have just some kind of a process in place here, there's a lot of last minute stuff or missing materials, and somebody thought that someone was was supposed to do it and we're trying to have it so that when you have things to look at, you have the best possible information in front of you if we don't have some kind of process. This is not at all meant to micromanage anything. It is simply, again, know who the point people are and what the expectations are as you bring things forward so that we have good use of our time.
>> is that what we did last time? This is basically what we did last time?
>> pretty close to it, yeah. It's just formalizing it so we can point to it and say now, here are the expectations.
>> I think the only thing that we would ask from our end is perhaps, judge, if you would issue an e-mail or memo to the other Travis County elected officials regarding the information on this next to last page or something similar that they would have an idea of what the process was too so that they would know how to do it. And we're happy to follow up with each of them as well.
>> so have we shared with them both pages or just the next to the last?
>> next to the last.
>> it would be four lines underlined in the middle, that one?
>> yes.
>> where it says other Travis County elected officials?
>> yes.
>> do you need an actual motion on that, judge or just it shall be?
>> if there's no objection we'll just do it, directions to the court.
>> not a problem for me.
>> makes sense to me.
>> that's all we have. There will be more in the next couple of months.
>> but not on Thursdays.
>> has the legislative bp working on public school finance?
>> they have. And you might have seen in the news the senate has come out with a plan and it still lacks some specifics, but we haven't heard that much from the house yet. But it has been put on as an emergency measure, so I think the next couple of weeks we'll see a lot more from the house as well as to how it's going to goment go.
>> what's the state of the state? It's usually the first couple of weeks of the session.
>> I don't know the date, I’m sorry. We can find that out.
>> okay, just e-mail me. Thanks.
>> anything else while we have him here? Thank you very much for coming back.
>> thank you.
>> happy birthday.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, January 19, 2005 8:11 AM