Letter to the Editor: Basin User Fee is a Trojan horse being rolled into our city government

The following was presented to the South Lake Tahoe City Council on Tuesday, January 18, 2022. Duane Wallace, the presenter and CEO of South Lake Tahoe Chamber submitted it in its entirety for publication.

We are here on behalf of the Chamber and the small businesses and their employees because at a past Council meeting the City was invited to be a part of an effort to manage tourism. Others have decided that they are wary of tourists now called “over-tourism.” Now the TTD (Tahoe Transportation District) has come out with a long list of taxes including the Basin User Fee (Seen here on page 35 of the Jan 5th agenda. It is page 12).

The cover language that has arisen recently is “over-tourism” and “one Tahoe” and “sustainable tourism” themes. We believe these are cover phrases and precursors to the User Fee. We believe that a trojan horse is being rolled inside our City government walls. The TTD has spent a million dollars of taxpayer money to push for the Basin User Fee. We are here to sound the alarm.

It has been just 18 days since the final loss of 1,000 VHRs. That is hundreds of house cleaners, gardeners, office staff, painters, and agents and the products and groceries they purchase locally. We have not yet fully felt the effects of that change. Our schools have seen a dramatic drop in students. Families are moving out in droves due to high rents. During the pandemic, our businesses had closures for several months with Highway 50 closed for about one month during the fire. Then they had to buy and install protective structures and then they were limited to half the customers, especially restaurants. Then the smoke came for weeks choking off tourism. Then the Caldor fire sent us all away from town. Many people decided to not return. Then the businesses were faced with not enough employees. With the schools closed working parents had to stay home with their children just like this past week. No one could afford the cost of childcare if they could even find availability. Now as 7 percet inflation and five-dollar gas raises the cost of doing business and the shortage of employees causes a rise in wages and overtime, businesses are forced to raise their prices which hurts overall sales. Sierra at Tahoe’s economic report showed a $48 million economic loss from Sierra not being open.

This past year and a half have been a tourism anomaly. Tourists and Bay area residents came here to avoid the pandemic in the crowded cities and to avoid the crime-ridden sidewalks of the Bay area. Our beaches and many campgrounds and trails were closed causing congestion and angst. Those who are perhaps retired and those who have government salaries not directly connected to tourism became angry that others wanted to come here like they did their selves. It seems people always want to close the door behind them.

I have had private conversations with TRPA (Tahoe Regional Planning Agency). They tell us that TRPA is against a Basin User Fee. However, we are aware that they have approached Governor Newsome and Governor Sisolak to assess their willingness to impose a fee on both locals and tourists using this U.S. highway. They also helped pay for this tax study. In addition, the TTD has spent over $1 million of our taxpayer funds to promote the Basin User Tax. That’s enough to cause us real concern.

TRPA has 65 employees with about 25 more at the TTD with not one economist amongst them. It’s a classic example of mission creep. Simply put, they don’t know what they are talking about are not capable legally or practically to manage a billion dollars in revenue, and are completely unqualified to manage tourism. They are messing with market forces they do not understand.

Nature has been our natural tourism cure. We’ve had mudslides that closed highway 50 for three months, snowstorms that closed every access for days, rain on 5- foot snows that had us using canoes where Grocery Outlet and Motel 6 are. We’ve been through gas and electricity outages combined that lasted for 10 days. The deep Snow Bust, The Harvey’s bombing, 911, building moratoriums, The advent of Indian Gaming, and the Angora fire. We just went through the pandemic and Caldor fire together.

Our businesses and local families have enough to deal with without artificially harming ourselves.

So based upon this list. if you buy a property here they could charge you for driving into town to look at the home and then a property transfer fee if you bought the home. If your grandmother comes to visit you they would charge her a Basin User fee. If you fly and rent a car they could tax that rental. If you parked your car they could charge a parking fee and a Zonal fee through some sort of big brother spy camera system. If you buy anything here there would be a sales tax. Now if that cured Over tourism and made you not come to Tahoe, they would charge you a vacancy tax for not using your property. Or if you stayed in a motel they would charge a TOT tax. If you had enough of Tourism Management and sold your house they would charge you another transfer fee. I have no idea what a mobility mitigation fee is but they could charge that too. THEY WOULD GET US ALL COMING AND GOING! All this money would flow into the coffers of an agency that has completely failed at running a linear bus system. And much of the funds might be used in projects in the other counties around the lake, not where it's generated. And just another glimpse of insanity is that if their Tourism Management worked and tourists stayed away then they wouldn’t get as much income from the tourism taxes to run the transportation system. So this plan’s success would depend on it’s failure! If people came they would get the taxes but we’d still have tourists. If they stayed away as desired then the transportation system wouldn’t have the funds to run the system. Insanity.

If the TTD gets their hands on a billion dollars in Basin User fees and a menu of other fees and taxes, it will unfairly crush our poorest residents and visitors and bankrupt many more businesses. I hope you have noticed the closed businesses or those like Denny’s and Jack in the Box and I Hop that often close at 4 pm or on some days don’t open at all. The business dynamics have changed. We need time to sort out the true results. We don’t yet know.

If allowed to lure you into giving away one billion dollars of our economy to pour into a failed bus system that leaks money like a sieve, TTD will be in control of all the funds that you might need to run this city in the future. You will have to go hat in hand to beg the TTD for the crumbs they may grant you with strings attached. Will the citizens still vote for the proposed school bond or a County snowplow bond if they have already been taxed six ways from Sunday? We don’t yet know. You are our City Council. You are our elected representatives. We elected you to represent us, not them. It is your City…our City. You are our Tahoe Team not them. Your answer in our opinion should be an emphatic NO.

Bruce Grego: You have heard from Duane about the wish list of taxes that TRPA and TTD are proposing.

My part of this presentation is about Accountability.

This City Council’s authority to act is based upon an election mandate. You and your actions are subject to election, recall, referendum, and initiative. Before any action is taken, the public is invited to comment. And to ensure that you do listen to citizens’ concerns, you must face the voters every four years and defend your actions. YOU ARE BY DEFINITION AN EXAMPLE OF DEMOCRACY IN ACTION.

The TRPA and TTD have been created as the result of the Bi-State Compact. Their board members are not elected by the People they govern. Neither agency nor its Board is subject to election, recall, referendum, or initiative.

The TRPA and the TTD imitate the democratic process by holding public hearings concerning actions. But it is not the same. If their Board chooses not to consider public input they suffer no consequences to them.

When a person from the public, such as Duane and me, speak, we do this at our own expense. We leave our work to express your opinions and our views to impact the decision-making process of this elected body. When Julie Reagan speaks for TRPA’s position on tourism, she is a paid advocate on public salary. We have to pay to place articles in the paper to have our voice heard. TRPA has a monthly commentary at the Tahoe Tribune, has its own publication, and uses other media to advocate...all at the taxpayer's expense. My point is that we do not have an equal playing field in the expression of ideas.

3Since the declared purpose of all these fees and taxes is to create a better transportation system, let’s consider TRPA's and the TTD's past performance.

Ten years ago, when I was on the Council, I was appointed by Council to represent the City on STATA. STATA failed miserably to operate a public transportation system in the Basin. It filed for bankruptcy and the Board members were personally sued by the company that operated buses. I understood the manager, selected by TRPA, did not even hold a driver's license. Who was held responsible for this debacle? No one.

When I was on the Council, I traveled by public bus for the purpose of observing the system and I was surprised that many buses traveled empty or with very few passengers. I don’t find the situation much better today. In speaking to users of the system, there are complaints about buses failing to meet their schedules and if you want to travel to Carson City, it takes over two hours by public bus.

During our recent snowstorm, public transportation stopped.

Yet the same staff that is now advocating for a Basin User Fee are unable to perform their current mission. TRPA and TTD have no successful track record to support their plans for a Basin Wide transportation system.

When the Bi-State Compact was created, neither agency has the authority to tax; clearly, this was done to limit their authority.

There are constitutional questions when the proposal to regulate the inflow of citizens coming into the basin and traveling to another state. Article 1, section 8 to be specific. A good friend, the late Edward McCarthy, use to always say that the TRPA’s regulations would result in Tahoe becoming a “playground for rich”. We have seen this happen regarding housing, in our economy and now this proposal of a Basin User fee will discriminate against middle and lower groups entering and using the Basin. I submit that the People's right to travel and to be treated equally will be violated with the proposal of the Basin User Fee and the other taxes proposed.

What governmental entity has the capacity to wisely regulate the flow of tourists in the Tahoe Basin and consider and mitigate all impacts of their actions. Certainly, we cannot entrust the unelected, unaccountable and undemocratic governmental bodies of TRPA and TTD to make these decisions. Who will be held responsible if the proposed taxes are permitted, when a vast public transportation system is created, and the system fails?

I say that Government’s involvement to this level in the private sector will only lead to adverse consequences to the private sector and to the People that live and earn a living here.