After controversy, Hilton Head chamber won’t reveal how it spends $2.5M of tax money
After the Hilton Head mayor and members of Town Council requested that the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce reveal how it spends millions in tax dollars, the issue was sent to a committee for review.
But the recommendations reviewed by the finance and administrative committee on Tuesday do not even mention the words “spending” or “receipts.”
This means the committee, which will review the options again on Nov. 7, has no way to require the chamber to report how it spends millions in accommodations tax (A-TAX) money for the foreseeable future. Last year, the chamber received $2.5 million from the town.
The issue will go on to another finance and administrative meeting and then Town Council, which will likely vote on the recommendations in December, mayoral candidate and committee chairman John McCann said.
How the fight for “chamber transparency” started
The chamber acts as the island’s Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) and unlike the other recipients of the A-TAX, Hilton Head Mayor David Bennett said the DMO does not report how it spends the $2.5 million.
Bennett and Mayor Pro Temp Kim Likins tried to get the chamber to release quarterly spending reports in August, but Town Council members McCann and Bill Harkins said they went behind council and the chamber’s backs to change the contract between the two halfway through its five-year lifetime.
The issue was sent to the finance and administrative committee, which is composed of Likins, McCann and Town Council member Tom Lennox.
Four representatives joined the committee: two from the DMO — chamber president and CEO Bill Miles and chairman of the 2018 executive board Chris McCorkendale — and two citizens, Carlton Dallas and David Fingerhut, to discuss the budget and transparency.
Chamber and the town come face-to-face with citizens
Instead of requiring the chamber release spending records to the town as Bennett originally suggested, the committee reviewed three recommendations from Dallas and Fingerhut:
- Appointing two citizens to the chamber’s marketing committee
- Appointing two nonvoting citizens to the town’s finance and administrative committee
- Giving a notice of termination of the town’s marketing contract with the chamber in November 2019, which would go into effect the following year
The DMO contract requires any notice of termination from the town one year before the contract expires.
McCann said committee members can come back and make changes to the recommendations at the Nov. 7 meeting.
Bennett said the recommendations are a good start, even if they don’t demand the chamber’s spending records. He told the Island Packet that “the way we’re going to get somewhere is to end the contract” in 2020.
“So with a clean slate... the town should take the position of setting the standards for those who would like the privilege of our A-TAX dollars,” Bennett said.
McCorkendale said the chamber is open to operating with an “increased level of reporting.”
“There’s not a piece of information that we have that we won’t hand over,” he said. “By the way, we’re not pulling the ‘secret sauce’ card.”
However, the chamber won’t be required to report spending with the current recommendations.
In August, Miles used an issue of Travel + Leisure at a town council meeting to illustrate what he called the “secret sauce” of the chamber: specifically, how much the chamber pays for advertising in the magazine and on social media.
Since the first Island Packet report on this issue, the chamber has posted its 2018-2019 marketing plan online. The plan details how much money is budgeted for social media and magazine advertising campaigns — or what Miles called the chamber’s “secret sauce” in August.
Transparency: a key issue in the Hilton Head mayoral race
The fight for chamber transparency has been brought up several times by candidates in the mayoral race.
McCann, who announced his run for mayor last year, is at the forefront of the questions on chamber transparency.
When the issue came up at Town Council in August, McCann criticized the mayor for bringing up the potential of requiring spending reports.
McCann also amended the motion to ensure that members of the DMO would sit on the committee that reviewed the contract.
When asked about chamber transparency at an October candidate forum, he said “everybody should be 100 percent transparent,” and that “something should be worked out” so “we” see the chamber’s receipts.
McCann seemed eager to get the DMO issue taken care of quickly, although the committee will not meet again to make recommendations until after the election.
Likins, who brought the original motion for quarterly spending reports, did not press the receipts issue in the meeting. She said she has fielded many questions in her mayoral campaign about chamber spending.
“That’s what I’m trying to get at in the best way possible without harming any of your business practices,” Likins said to Miles and McCorkendale. “But also helping the citizens feel as though they do have an understanding of how this public money is being spent and that they’re comfortable.”
This story was originally published October 17, 2018 at 4:06 PM.