I copied this story from the 1-08-10 edition of the Sentinel. While local governments struggle with providing public services and paying for public safety they continue to subsidize the local Chamber of Commerce with no questions asked. How does giving a local Chamber of Commerce tax dollars benefit the community? Good question, I hope some citizens ask.
Governments Using Contracts to Co-op Chambers
The city of Loma Linda is subsidizing the Loma Linda Chamber of Commerce with annual payments of $59,500.
This week the Loma Linda City Council authorized the release, as of January 5, a quarterly payment in the amount of $14,875. That payment was not made from the city’s general fund but rather came out of its redevelopment agency’s operating budget.
In requesting the money, Richard Schaefer, the president of the Loma Linda Chamber of Commerce, said that the $14,875 was due to the chamber “pursuant to the chamber’s ongoing promotional agreements. Those [quarterly] payments represent compensation for completion of work during October, November, and December 2009.”
According to Schaefer, “We continue to serve the general public and the business community, with total response to request and inquiries and general communications at 18,800 [exchanges] for the months of October, November and December.
Other services the chamber provided, according to Schaefer, include the distribution of the chamber’s publication, the Loma Linda Report; its sponsorship of the 16th Annual Community Parade on October 18; its coordination of the 18th Annual State of the Community Luncheon on December 9; its cosponsoring of the Holiday Classic on December 6 and the perpetuation of the Loma Linda Farmers Market.
Moreover in 2010, Schaefer told the city council, which also acts as the governing board for the city redevelopment agency, the chamber plans to reopen the Farmers Market in March, hold the annual Loma Linda Business Showcase, host its annual golf tournament and coordinate grand openings and ribbon cuttings for new businesses and local institutions’ expansions.
The city of Loma Linda’s subsidization of its city’s chamber of commerce brings to public attention a controversy that has dogged chambers of commerce throughout San Bernardino County and elsewhere: their co-opting by government.
Traditionally, chambers of commerce are a form of business network in which businesses in a certain locale band together with the goal of furthering the interests of commercial entities. Business owners in towns and cities form chambers to advocate on behalf of the local business community. The proprietors of such local businesses as well as their employees are eligible to become members, who elect a board of directors or executive council to set policy for the chamber. The board or council then elects a president, and hires a CEO or executive director, and in larger chambers staff members to run the organization.
Typically, a chamber of commerce serves as a bulwark against excessive government regulation of businesses as well as the enactment of laws or the imposition of policies that are antithetical to the interests of business. As such, chambers of commerce, because they typically are composed of individuals and entities who have substantial economic means, represent a serious counterbalance to the unbridled authority of local government. As a consequence, local governmental officials often cast about for some means of controlling chambers of commerce or otherwise compromising their mission and effectiveness.
A common method in this regard is for municipalities to offer subsidization to their local chambers. In some cases, a city will provide the physical quarters where the chamber of commerce is located, quite often in these cases, right within the civic center itself. Also, as in the case of Twentynine Palms, the city will provide a substantial amount of money to the chamber to defray its cost of operation.
Elsewhere in San Bernardino County, this coziness between a city and its chamber has led to the bastardization of the chamber’s function, in some cases to the point where the chamber can become an advocate of regulation that its constituent business members actually oppose.
In the city of Colton in the 1990s, for example, the relationship between the Colton Chamber of Commerce and the city grew so close that the chamber was widely seen as an arm of city government or a city department. The chamber headquarters were located in an annex of Colton City Hall. The city council, on an annual basis, provided over $100,000 in city money to the chamber. The Colton chamber’s executive director, Dick Dawson, was commonly mistaken for a city employee by business people and citizens around town. Dawson was known to lobby entrepreneurs for their support of city initiatives, even when those initiatives had a negative impact on business. He was also known to report back to city officials about intransigent business owners who were resisting those initiatives or who were refusing to comply with the city’s plans. Eventually, a revolt among the city’s chamber members occurred, with scores of businesses withdrawing their chamber memberships to the point that the chamber became a virtual non-entity. It was only after Dawson, whose salary was picked up nearly in total by the city, made his exodus that the Colton Chamber of Commerce made a comeback as an advocate for the business community.
In Twenty-nine Palms, the city in 2009 provided $110,000 to the Twentynine Palms Chamber of Commerce. The city of Rancho Cucamonga pays the Rancho Cucamonga Chamber of Commerce $57,000 for a host of services it renders the community, doled out at a rate of $4,750 per month.
In Fontana the chamber receives $20,000 annually paid out in $5,000 quarterly instalments for economic development related services, business retention and enhancement, community enhancement and the provision of information to new residents and visitors. In addition, to the $20,000 the city pays for those services, it also provides the chamber with in-kind remuneration in the form of housing for the chamber office in a city-owned facility.
The city of Hesperia pays the Hesperia Chamber of Commerce $50,000 per year to host mixers, workshops and other functions.
The city of Ontario pays the Ontario Chamber of Commerece $10,000 per year to provide business retention services.
Nor are cities the only governmental entities that seek to compromise the function of the various chambers of commerce. The county of San Bernardino has apportioned a chunk of change to be given to the chambers of commerce that function within its borders to dull the edges of their anti-regulatory swords.
The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors this fiscal year is diverting $260,000 in bed taxes the county collected at various hotels and motels in the unincorporated areas of the county to 22 chambers of commerce or like organizations. The majority of those chambers are in unincorporated county areas. Three of them, however - the Big Bear Chamber of Commerce, the Colton Chamber of Commerce and the Fontana Chamber of Commerce - lie within and serve incorporated cities.
According to Mark Dowling, the agency administrator for the county department of economic development, the county is distributing the bed tax, which the county refers to as transient occupancy tax, “to designated chambers of commerce and/or organizations to promote tourism and recreation within the county of San Bernardino.”
In Bloomington, which has no chamber of commerce, the money was provided to the park and recreation district.
The county allocated the Baker Chamber of Commerce $13,925; the Big Bear Chamber of Commerce $47,907; the Bloomington Park and Recreation District $4,088; the Colton Chamber of Commerce $1,301; the Crestline Chamber of Commerce $9,879; the Daggett Chamber of Commerce $1,000; El Mirage Chamber of Commerce $1,000 ; the Fawnskin Chamber of Commerce $2,567; the Fontana Chamber of Commerce $7,067; the Helendale Chamber of Commerce $1,000; and the Joshua Tree Chamber of Commerce $12,164. The Lake Arrowhead Resorts Chamber of Commerce was given a whopping $133,062. The Lucerne Valley Chamber of Commerce has been allotted $1,000, as was the Mentone Chamber of Commerce. The Morongo Valley Chamber of Commerce was granted $1,149; the Newberry Springs Chamber of Commerce $2,078; the Parker Chamber of Commerce $1,775; the Phelan Chamber of Commerce $2,040, the Pinon Hills Chamber of Commerce $2,040; the Running Springs Chamber of Commerce $4,269; the Wrightwood Chamber of Commerce $5,580; and the Yermo Chamber of Commerce $4,109.
