Steve Duin: Coos County whiffs on lodging taxes at Bandon Dunes

Your passion is golf, and you regularly step up to challenge yourself on the world's best public courses. When you and your buddies played Pebble Beach last fall, you forked out $495 in green fees and $1,030 for a night with an ocean view at The Lodge.

You only live once, right? And that's precisely why you don't sweat the "bed" tax, which runs 10.5 percent in Monterey (Calif.) County.

Why bother? Everyone knows hotel taxes are, like chocolates on the pillow, part of the package. When you play Pinehurst in North Carolina, the tax adds 3 percent to your bill.  Whistling Straits in Wisconsin, site of the 2015 PGA Championship? Eight percent.

And Bandon Dunes on the glorious southern Oregon coast?

Zilch. Nada. Diddly.

No, weekends among the Oregon dunes don't come cheap. Green fees at the Bandon Dune Resort's four 18-hole courses run $75 to $265, depending on the season. A cottage for your foursome at The Grove costs $1,900 on a midsummer's night.

But Coos County doesn't add a single penny of - as it's known in the trade - transient occupancy tax.

That's curious because (a) lodging taxes are so common at high-flying resorts; and (b) Coos County, like so much of rural Oregon, is hurting.  The county has lost 260 of its 550 employees in recent years, Commissioner John Sweet said last week, and is facing a 10-percent budget shortfall this year.

"The county certainly needs revenue," Sweet said, "and that (tax) certainly is a revenue opportunity. We've considered it. I wrestle with it. But it would be so targeted as to seem unfair. It's not like we have a lot of hotels and motels in the county."

True. As Commissioner Melissa Cribbins points out, a county lodging tax would apply only to rooms in unincorporated areas not covered by the TOTs in Bandon, North Bend and Coos Bay: "We're looking at vacation rentals, hotels out of Charleston, and Bandon Dunes."

But Mike Keiser's wind-swept mecca - which features four of the top 16 tracks on Golf Digest's ranking of America's best public courses - is an extraordinary draw. Guests at the resort were recently told it hosted 11,000 rounds in January, the height of the off season. Golfers are booking pilgrimages to Coos County a year or more in advance.

Who out there believes anyone parachuting in from Chicago, Boston or Miami would be dissuaded by a 7-percent bed tax?

"When's the last time you went to a hotel and asked what their transient occupancy tax was?" asked Rodger Craddock, the Coos Bay city manager.  "No one does."

Mark Campbell, Multnomah County's chief financial officer, puts it this way:  "Counties don't have a lot of tools in the tool chest to provide services that folks demand.  Why wouldn't you take advantage of something you can implement?"

Multnomah County collected $48.7 million from hotel/motel visitors last year.  The expansion of the Oregon Convention Center was financed by 2.5 percent increases in the TOT and motor-vehicle rental fees.

Bandon Dunes has long been a fascinating window into this country's conflicted views on taxes and government subsidies.  David Cay Johnston opened his book, "Free Lunch," with the story of how the Oregon Lottery and a lot of coach passengers paid for the $31 million expansion of the North Bend airport, so it might accommodate the corporate jets aimed at the resort.

Bandon Resort Properties LLC and Bandon Golf Courses paid $614,000 in county taxes last year on property that now bears -- thanks to Keiser -- a real-market value of $161 million.  And resort guests do pay the 1-percent state hotel tax that benefits Oregon tourism.

But make no mistake:  The lodging tax is an economic and philosophical dilemma for the county, not Bandon Dunes.  As Bandon Mayor Mary Schamehorn notes, the resort has permanently fixed her town in lights on the national tourism marquee.

But most of the profits and jobs remain -- with the golf fanatics -- at the resort.  The town is not flush with crowded restaurants or new homes.  And the county doesn't have many other revenue-generating tools at its disposal.

Coos County is only one of several Oregon counties that might offer a lodging tax for voter approval. Schamehorn is a big fan.  "I cannot imagine any groundswell of opposition to the county imposing a tax on Bandon Dunes," she said.  "I think it would be met with cheers."

Not by Sweet.  Even if the tax is levied on guests, Sweet believes it would take a bite out of the resort and Mike Keiser: "He's created a foundation, and funds it to the tune of $500,000 a year.  He's donated half a million to our Bay Area Hospital.  He's expanded his business.  It seems unfair to add a tax."

-- Steve Duin

sduin@oregonian.com

503-221-8597; @SteveDuin

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