I recently attended a meeting of the Lodging Advisory Committee for Island County. This committee makes recommendations to the Island County Commissioners for the allocation of the 2 percent of lodging tax dollars returned to the county for distribution to organizations with programs that promote and encourage tourism in Island County.

I was invited because my organization, Whidbey Island Writers Association, had submitted a grant proposal. My concern is not that my organization was unsuccessful in obtaining funding, but rather with the flawed process used to establish the recommendations for this year’s total of $90,000.

The committee membership is dominated by a majority of executive directors and representatives of local chambers of commerce and also includes the owners of three local inns and bed and breakfast establishments as well as State Rep. Barbara Bailey who spoke for the Navy League. No representatives of arts groups, festivals or museums were included as members. The audience was made up of invitees from local chamber staffs as well as individuals from selected non-profit organizations that had submitted funding requests.

The process of allocating funds did not involve any discussion of the merits of various proposals, nor was a written summary of the total dollars requested by each applicant made available. Consequently, attendees could not ascertain how the requested dollars were to be used or understand what percentage of the requested total was recommended for funding.

The initial business of the committee revolved around recommending what amounts should be allocated to each chamber of commerce. Presumably this was based on the unspoken assumption that these groups were to be funded first because their funding requests superseded all others. Each committee member offered a proposed dollar amount for each chamber, and, without further discussion of individual requests or of the vast differences in proposed allocations, (in one case the range was from $10,000 to $30,000 for the same proposal) the dollar figures were averaged and that amount was accepted by the group.

More astounding, and of greater concern, was the fact that no committee member felt compelled on either procedural or ethical grounds to exempt themselves from voting on their own request. Not surprisingly, the initial total of chamber allocations was $89,845, leaving a total of $155 dollars to be divided among the six non-profit grant requests on the agenda.

A similar process was then used to determine what dollars would be allocated to the remaining requests. At this point, since a number of chamber representatives stated they had “exhausted” the dollars in the pot with the previous self-directed allocations, they offered a zero dollar amount toward the averaging process. Mathematically these zero figures substantially lowered the outcome for each non-chamber group.

Although some later manipulation of the dollars allowed a total of almost $8,000 to be allocated to organizations represented in the audience, in excess of 90 percent of the available funding was directed to local chambers of commerce by their own representatives.

Clearly this is neither a neutral nor a fair process. At the very least, members of the committee should recuse themselves from voting on their own proposals. A greater sense of ethical clarity and transparency could be achieved if the Island County Commissioners reconstituted the lodging committee with a membership of concerned citizens who would not benefit directly or indirectly from the distribution of the funds.

Perhaps the dollar allocations would not substantially change, but there would not be the apparent conflict of interest that currently exists.

Gail Madden

lives in Clinton.