Tourism and recreation are vital parts of the Chattanooga-area economy, so anything that might adversely affect those industries concerns everyone in our region.
For instance, a controversy is brewing over some higher fees planned by the Tennessee Valley Authority. While we can see why heavily indebted TVA would seek more revenue, its plan to slap potentially much higher costs on hundreds of businesses along shorelines in the Chattanooga area is worrisome.
A lot of those commercial-use fees have been in the range of $400 to $1,200 per year, which TVA considers too low. So starting in 2013, the federally owned utility plans to require the affected businesses — often marinas, campgrounds and such — to pay either 4 percent of their gross revenue or what is deemed to be a more market-value rental rate for the use of public land.
“These folks are in private business making money off of public land,” said Bill Sitton, a spokesman for TVA.
That may be true. But it is also true that government fees, rents and taxes do not exist in a vacuum. They ripple throughout the economy by diverting money out of the productive private sector. The shoreline businesses facing higher TVA-imposed costs provide badly needed jobs. Significantly higher costs to those businesses — some of which are small mom-and-pop operations — are sure to reduce investment in new jobs, may make it harder for the companies to maintain their existing staffing levels and may even threaten the survival of some companies.