Which came first?

Okay, today during the Flat Rock village agenda meeting, I expressed concern that the Flat Rock Playhouse was requesting county funding by imposing a tax increase on hotel lodging. I was then told that the Playhouse did not request the tax increase, the county commissioners did. Looking back at news reports from the spring, the picture is not quite so clear. From this May 25 story in the Hendersonville Lightning, it is reported:

...Commissioner Mike Edney raised the idea on Tuesday during a budget work session when commissioners took up a request for support from the Flat Rock Playhouse. Some local leaders have been talking for several weeks about adding 1 cent to the hotel tax, and devoting the money to the Playhouse, which makes the claim that the professional theater generates millions of dollars worth of spending by drawing people to the Playhouse in Flat Rock and to its new performance space in downtown Hendersonville. One cent would raise about $220,000 a year.

"I just don't think we need to do that for a specific entity, especially a private enterprise," [Commissioner Larry Young] told the Lightning this week. "I'm against that. Any room tax should go to Travel and Tourism and let them spend it."

"We give them grant money every year," he said of the grants T&T gives to tourism-related organizations. This year the agency gave the Playhouse $5,000.

Last year the non-profit theater company opened the Playhouse Downtown and this season it will stage 50 nights of shows in theater performances and the popular Music on the Rock series.

"Both with the county and the city, it's very straightforward," said Vincent Marini, producing director of the Playhouse. "Without that money our budget doesn't work." State Sen. Tom Apodaca, R-Hendersonville, has discussed the idea with Playhouse officials and with Edney.

"I told him I'd have to have a resolution from the county before we'd do it," Apodaca said. "I just think it's the right thing to do. That's the biggest draw we've got in the county week to week."...

The commissioners in May "took up a request for support from the Flat Rock Playhouse," so the Playhouse did request support, of what kind it's not said. Commissioner Edney apparently raised the idea of the tax increase as a way to give the Playhouse the support they requested, an idea that had already been talked about by other local leaders (and I doubt it was done in a vacuum). State Sen. Apodaca then discussed the idea with Playhouse officials and Commissioner Edney, so the Playhouse knew before the state senate passed the hotel tax increase legislation in July that the tax funds, if approved, were earmarked for the Playhouse.

According to this news story, the Playhouse budget would not work without county money, and Sen. Apodaca felt he needed to show county support before he could request the state senate to vote on a bill benefiting the Flat Rock Playhouse--I'm assuming for the reasons Mr. McKibbin said today in the meeting, that the state government wants to see local support before they act.

So technically the Playhouse officials did not request funding to come through a tax increase, but they were definitely requesting county funding, which in whatever shape that funding arrives, is of course tax money, and which they are perfectly entitled to do. . . It's up to elected officials to determine if a tax increase that penalizes one, and only one, specific industry to benefit one specific business is the way to do it.