Cooper: State's Convention and Visitors Bureau audit results concerning

Bob Doak, president and CEO of the Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau, delivers the State of the Tourism Industry address during the 76th annual Meeting and Luncheon of the Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau in September.
Bob Doak, president and CEO of the Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau, delivers the State of the Tourism Industry address during the 76th annual Meeting and Luncheon of the Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau in September.

Although some officials made light Wednesday of the findings of a state audit that examined the Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), we believe taxpayers deserve better than the organization's lax record-keeping, gift card policies and expense procedures.

Let us say that we don't believe the tourist bureau set out to cheat taxpayers or intentionally waste money.

However, we do believe the CVB has allowed a culture in which money was spent freely, where there was little check on spending, and where the fact it is a quasi-government agency has never seemed to matter.

The Tennessee Comptroller's Office audit, for instance, found that 36 percent of the CVB's credit card charges had no detailed receipts, that no log was kept of gift cards it received - and expenses it later incurred - in exchange for website advertising, and that no written reports could be found of the "regular and periodic written reports" the organization is supposed to make to the mayor and county commissioners.

Private businesses would never allow such lenient record-keeping. Indeed, the Internal Revenue Service would come down hard on such permissiveness.

Bob Doak, the CVB's soon-to-retire, longtime president and CEO, insisted that rules are different for those engaged in promoting the city.

"Government certainly has their own rules," he said, "but we operate under the standards of the industry we work with."

That sounds a little like "let-them-eat-cake" to us.

The CVB gets more than 80 percent of its funding from the county's hotel room tax, so surely Doak understands that county government - and thus, taxpayers - is the agency benefactor.

Keith Sanford, treasurer of the organization's board and president and CEO of the Tennessee Aquarium, didn't appear to be worried about the findings, either.

"I don't see a whole lot here [in the audit] which is really bad stuff," he said, "except the receipt piece, which I'm really not comfortable with."

The audit itself said while some of the CVB's expenses may appear lavish or questionable compared to county government departments, within the tourism promotion and recruitment industry they might be considered reasonable or necessary.

We agree. Without a doubt, the organization has done a terrific job in bringing tourism - in a variety of forms, shapes and sizes - to Chattanooga. We understand the agency must spend money to draw money back into the city and county, and by all rights it has done that. Visitor spending has reached around $1 billion annually.

Where we find fault is with the CVB's cavalier attitude about its spending, its records and its transparency. The attitude seems to be: As long as we're not doing anything illegal, how we spend our money and how we keep our books are nobody's business.

The county submits an audit report on the organization every year, but it doesn't have the financial details that both the state checked through for its audit and which the agency gave County Commissioner Tim Boyd earlier this year (but said couldn't be made public because of a state rule on the release of "audit working papers").

Boyd had raised concerns about some of the CVB's spending practices and openly questioned whether all of the hotel room tax should go to the agency. CVB officials pooh-poohed his concerns at the time and denied anything was amiss.

On Wednesday, the commissioner felt some of his worries had been validated.

"What is important now," he said, "is the path of the cooperation that the commission, the county mayor and the CVB board [choose] to follow going forward."

Although the state report concluded "no obvious material instances of waste or abuse were noted," the organization already has made changes in its record-keeping.

Sanford promised the required written report to the mayor and county commissioners would be made, acknowledged itemized receipts have been submitted since July and said a log of gift card expenditures now was being kept.

That activity alone would indicate all was not as it should have been with the CVB's records.

We said earlier this year we believe the organization could thrive with less than 100 percent of the county's hotel room tax, but what is more important is that it continue to follow through with thorough reports to the county, that county commissioners continue to closely examine its expenses (and those of other entities receiving large amounts of county money), and that it examine its policies and procedures to see where it could rein in spending where possible while still laying out what it takes to draw in tourists.

The CVB has done yeoman's work in assisting Chattanooga in becoming one of the "it" cities in the country, but there's no reason the agency can't be as transparent as the city is golden.

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