More than a year after the California State Auditor slammed Anaheim for improperly managing its tourism contracts, the city has finally responded with new procedures to monitor the millions of dollars a year it sends to the non-profit tourism bureau, Visit Anaheim. The city’s new contract requires the bureau to detail spending and meet benchmarks.
It’s about time, but it’s not enough. In 2010, the city created the Anaheim Tourism Improvement District, which essentially taxes tourist district hotels. The bulk of the funding, 75%, goes to the bureau to promote the city and handle convention-center booking. The remainder goes to transportation improvements in the district.
“In general, we determined that the city lacked a meaningful contract monitoring process and did not properly manage the contracts it entered into with these entities, resulting in unallowable spending and unmet deliverables,” per the state audit. Leave it up to government officials to shell out $111 million before demanding stricter oversight. It took allegations of misspending to get to this point.
The auditors found that Visit Anaheim “routed taxpayer dollars to the chamber which then funneled the money to support ‘resort-friendly candidates through its political action committee’ and lobby for laws that benefited hotels in Disney’s vicinity,” as LAist reported. This was among the many shocking details that emerged from Anaheim’s scandal involving the aborted attempt to sell Angel stadium—and sent former Mayor Harry Sidhu to prison.
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Anaheim can easily find a lower-cost method of handling convention-center bookings—and there are plenty of ways to upgrade roads without creating what amounts to a giant slush fund.
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