Budget proposal would maintain funding for statewide, regional tourism efforts
Gov. Ned Lamont’s two-year budget proposal calls for an increase in funding for statewide tourism marketing and maintains funding for the eastern, central and western tourism districts, which have been on life support for the last three years.
The proposal recommends that $4.4 million be set aside for statewide marketing — essentially out-of-state advertising — in fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2021, up from $4.1 million in the current fiscal year.
Each of the regional districts would receive $400,000 in each of the next two fiscal years, the same amount they’re due to receive in the current fiscal year. The districts went without funding in the previous two years.
“I’m very pleased that regional tourism is still alive,” said Ed Dombroskas, the eastern district’s executive director. “There was even a little increase for statewide marketing, but given the governor’s stated desire to fully market the state for tourism and economic development there’s not the kind of funding in there (the budget) to accomplish what he’s been talking about.”
Dombroskas said a special panel on tourism has just completed a report it will submit to the speaker of the House of Representatives and that he expects a lot more conversation about tourism and how the state should be funding it. Legislative committees are expected to debate a number of tourism-related bills in the weeks ahead.
Revenue generated by the state’s hotel room occupancy tax is another source of funding for tourism, the arts and culture. That tax, already the highest in the nation at 15 percent, is scheduled to climb to 17 percent in the next fiscal year, which begins July 1. Ten percent of the revenue generated by the tax — about $12.9 million — would be diverted to the Tourism Fund in each of the next two years.
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