To pay for tourism boost, Chicago ramps up hotel tax, making it nation's highest

Chicago’s already sky-high hotel tax will climb to 19%, highest in the nation, to help market the city to convention organizers and tourists.

The City Council made it happen on Wednesday by unanimously agreeing to create a Tourism Improvement District and raise the tax on hotel rooms within that district to 19%. The current combined city, county and state tax on hotel rooms is 17.5%.

Alderpersons who normally wince at raising taxes jumped at the chance to boost the marketing budget for the convention and tourism agency known as Choose Chicago.

South Side Ald. David Moore (17th) jumped on board after voting no in committee to protest the fact that the 1.5 percentage point increase would also be paid by Chicago residents on staycations.

Hotels in all or part of 14 different wards — including Downtown, McCormick Place, the Illinois Medical District and Hyde Park — have volunteered to impose the increase for the next five years.

The tax is expected to generate more than $50 million a year to sell Chicago, and double a marketing budget that pales in comparison to other cities.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has an annual operating budget of $457 million, according to a comparison prepared by Choose Chicago. That’s followed by Visit Orlando ($116 million), Discover Los Angeles ($62 million), the San Diego Tourism Authority ($56.9 million) and New York’s NYC & Company ($45 million).

The increase would apply to room rates at hotels with 100 or more rooms that agree to opt in. Revenue would be used to market the city, bankroll incentives and cover bid fees, such as the $1 million required to enter the competition to host the Democratic National Convention.

Choose Chicago CEO Kristen Reynolds has argued that Chicago's convention competitors "know very well that Chicago is underfunded, and they use it to their advantage" to attract the same conventions, visitors and events Chicago is eyeing, but also to "lure away legacy clients that have been coming to Chicago for decades."

Also on Wednesday, Johnson handed the permanent job to acting Cultural Affairs and Special Events Commissioner Kenya Merritt, while the City Council confirmed his choices of LaKenya White to lead the Civilian Office of Police Accountability and Susan Cappello to be the permanent executive director of the Commission on Animal Care and Control.

More than two dozen animal welfare organizations and scores of shelter volunteers have condemned Cappello’s leadership and demanded that the Johnson administration conduct a nationwide search for her replacement.

They have described a toxic environment of “hostility, manipulation, favoritism and retaliation” where volunteers who complain are summarily dismissed. They have raised concerns about overcrowded and unsanitary shelter conditions, where dogs are held in cages, sometimes in their own waste — and often walked just once a week.

PAWS Chicago and other organizations and advocates have countered that Cappello is being “asked to do the impossible” in a city that earmarks just $8 million a year for animal care and control, less than one-third of the average spent in other major cities.

The spending shortage comes at a time when the number of dogs and cats arriving at the city-run shelter has surged by nearly 5,000 over the last two years. That’s because Chicagoans who can no longer afford to support themselves are choosing to relinquish their pets to a shelter that turns no animal away.

Animal Care and Control leadership has long been a revolving door, with a steady parade of executive directors struggling to solve the same chronic issues.

"This is a tough job, people. We don't give them enough money," Northwest Side Ald. Nick Sposato (38th) said Wednesday.

After confirming White, the Council approved a stalled measure authorizing COPA to investigate allegations against police officers accused of violating the city’s Welcoming City ordinance. Ald. Ray Lopez (15th) argued that the ordinance contradicts Johnson’s executive order requiring police officers to document abuses by federal immigration agents for potential felony prosecution.

“We are setting ourselves up, not only for failure. We are setting our officers up for lawsuits that we cannot afford,” Lopez said.

And the Council agreed to pay $27 million to the family of a mother of six killed in a high-speed police chase — nearly triple the amount awarded by a jury — amid warnings that new evidence in the case exposed taxpayers to a settlement “well over $100 million.”

Stacy Vaughn-Harrell, 47, and her then 21-year-old daughter, Kimberlyn Myers, were driving home in June 2017 — after Myers sang at a performance in Indiana — when they were hit by a car that was fleeing police through a residential area in Englewood at a speed of roughly 50 mph. Vaughn-Harrell was killed, and Myers suffered serious injuries, including a concussion, a lacerated liver and a broken collarbone requiring a plate and five screws.