Judges: MIKE BEEBE, Attorney General.
Filed Date: 12/15/2006
Status: Precedential
Modified Date: 7/5/2016
The Honorable Marilyn Edwards State Representative 2330 North Juneway Terrace Fayetteville, AR 72703-2915
Dear Representative Edwards:
I am writing in response to your request for my opinion on the following questions:
1. Can a city buy a building with Hotel, Motel Restaurant funds ["hamburger tax"1 funds] and the Advertising and Promotion ("AP") Commission administer the building? Is a lease required for such an arrangement?
2. Can a city purchase [a building] with cash from [hamburger tax] funds for use by the AP Commission as a visitors bureau? Is a lease required for such arrangement?
3. Can a nonprofit entity purchase property with [hamburger tax] funds for a tourist promotion facility if the Commission approves the project?
4. Can the AP Commission contract with a nonprofit entity to purchase a building for use as a visitors bureau?
My inquiries reveal that these questions relate to a proposed effort to locate the Fayetteville Convention and Visitors Bureau and a new visitor center in a particular property on a corner of the Fayetteville Square.
RESPONSE
With respect to your first question, I believe a city could clearly buy a building using revenues realized from a hamburger tax so long as its AP commission approved doing so and it only pledged the funds as collateral for bonds issued pursuant to either the Advertising and Promotion Commission Act, A.C.A. §§
Question 1: Can a city buy a building with Hotel, Motel Restaurantfunds ["hamburger tax" funds] and the Advertising and Promotion("AP") Commission administer the building? Is a lease required for suchan arrangement?
It is unclear from your question whether the proposed transaction would involve a direct purchase of real property using hamburger tax funds or a purchase using bond revenues collateralized by hamburger tax funds. As discussed below, I believe the former course would probably be impermissible under any circumstances, whereas the latter would be permissible so long as the both the voters and the AP commission approved the transaction.
Your question raises three issues: first, whether a city is authorized to purchase a building using hamburger tax funds; secondly, whether "administering" such a building would fall within the authority of the AP Commission; and thirdly, assuming the first two questions are answered in the affirmative, whether a lease would be required to consummate such an arrangement.
With respect to the authorization to impose a hamburger tax, A.C.A. §
Any city of the first class, city of the second class, or incorporated town may, by ordinance of the governing body thereof, levy a tax not to exceed three percent (3%) upon the gross receipts or gross proceeds identified in subsection (c) of this section.
Subsection (c) of this statute provides that this tax will be levied on the operations of hotels, motels and restaurants operating within the municipality. Subsection
These revenues shall be used or pledged for the purposes authorized in this subsection only upon approval of the commission created pursuant to this subchapter.
Subsection (a)(2)(A) further provides that "t]he commission is the body that determines the use of the advertising and promotion fund."
In Ark. Op. Att'y Gen. No.
Although the city council has the authority to initiate the advertising and promotion tax, A.C.A. §
26-75-602 , and to appoint the members of the advertising and promotion commission, A.C.A. §26-75-605 , and although the city council can express its preference regarding the use of the advertising and promotion revenues, the advertising and promotion commission must ultimately approve the use of the revenues.As previously indicated, the advertising and promotion commission has the ultimate authority to determine the use of the proceeds of the city's advertising and promotion tax, provided that such use is consistent with the uses and limitations stated in A.C.A. §
26-75-606 . As also indicated, state law does not require that the city council approve the commission's determinations regarding the use of these tax proceeds. For these reasons, I must conclude that although the city council can express its preference concerning the use of the advertising and promotion fund, the commission must give its approval in order for the fund to be used in that manner (and the use must be a permissible one).
It would appear, then, that a city's direct purchase of a building using hamburger tax revenues, if authorized at all, would at the very least need to be approved by the AP commission.2 The question of whether a purchase of the sort contemplated in your request would be authorized even with AP commission approval is somewhat complicated, possibly implicating the related question of whether an AP commission might itself be authorized to buy and own property in its own name in pursuit of its statutorily defined mission. I appreciate that you have inquired about a city's authority to purchase property using hamburger tax funds, not an AP commission's authority to do so. However, I consider this related question germane because, at least at first blush, it would seem logical that if the legislature has foreclosed an AP commission from purchasing real estate using tax revenues it exclusively controls, the commission could not simply authorize a city to use those funds for the same purpose. However, as discussed further below, this conclusion is far from inevitable.
With respect to the issue of whether an AP commission may itself own property, one of my predecessors offered the following analysis in the attached Ark. Op. Att'y Gen. No.
None of these expressly-stated grants of authority [in A.C.A. §
26-75-606 ] to AP commissions includes the authority to purchase or own property. It is my opinion, moreover, that the authority to purchase and own property cannot be implied from the commissions' expressly-granted authority. When the legislature has intended to grant such authority, it has done so. It has done so in numerous instances. For example, it has granted the authority to purchase and own property to school districts, A.C.A. §6-21-108 ; cities, A.C.A. §14-54-401 ; water districts, A.C.A. §14-116-402 ; soil and water conservation districts, A.C.A. §14-125-303 ; regional intermodal facilities authorities, A.C.A. §14-143-109 ; housing authorities, A.C.A. §14-169-215 ; bridge improvement districts, A.C.A. §14-320-120 ; regional airport authorities, A.C.A. §14-362-109 ; and the Arkansas Science and Technology Authority, A.C.A. §15-3-108 . The authority to purchase and own property is not a power that flows from the authority to administer the advertising and promotion fund. Because it is not, and because the legislature has not expressly granted AP commissions the authority to purchase and own property, I conclude that AP commissions do not have this authority.
Although I agree with my predecessor that the Advertising and Promotion Commission Act contains no express directive authorizing an AP commission to own real property, it might be argued that it indirectly does so by authorizing the expenditure of hamburger tax funds for the "[c]onstruction, reconstruction, extension, equipment, improvement, maintenance, repair, and operation of a convention center." A.C.A. §
However, I do not believe it would be appropriate to conclude that because an AP commission may not use hamburger tax revenues to buy property in its own name, it is therefore necessarily precluded from providing those revenues to the city to finance a purchase of that property in the city's name. With respect to a city's authority to purchase property of the sort at issue, A.C.A. §
Any municipality and any county in this state is authorized to own, acquire, construct, reconstruct, extend, equip, improve, operate, maintain, sell, lease, contract concerning, or otherwise deal in or dispose of any lands, buildings, improvement, or facilities of any and every nature whatever necessary or desirable for the securing and developing of recreation, relaxation, travel, entertainment, cultural development, and other tourism activities of every nature, which are collectively referred to as "tourism," within or near the municipality or within the county including, without limitation, hotels, motels, inns, lodges, folklore facilities, cultural development facilities, convention facilities, restaurants in connection with other facilities for the securing and developing of tourism, parks, scenic roadways and walkways, transportation facilities, parking facilities, tourist information and assistance centers, recreation areas, and other facilities of any nature whatever that can be used to secure and develop tourism and to thereby stimulate and enhance the economic growth and well-being of the municipality or county and the people. Any such undertaking, or combination of these undertakings, may be referred to as a "tourism project."
(Emphasis added.) On its face, this statute authorizes a city to acquire convention-center property regardless of whether it does so directly or through a financing mechanism like a bond issue. However, although A.C.A. §
In my opinion, only the legislature could clarify whether a city, with AP approval, could use hamburger tax revenues to directly purchase a building of the sort at issue in your request. However, there is no ambiguity in the Code regarding a city's right, with AP commission approval, to finance such a purchase through a bond issue collateralized by hamburger tax revenues. Specifically, the Advertising and Promotion Commission Act contemplates two distinct methods by which the proposed project might be financed by the issuance of bonds secured by hamburger tax revenues. First, the Act allows as follows for the issuance of municipal bonds under its own authority:
Cities of the first class levying the tax and creating the commission as permitted in this subchapter are authorized to acquire sites for, construct, reconstruct, extend, equip, improve, maintain, and operate convention centers and facilities necessary for, supporting, or otherwise pertaining to, convention centers which are collectively referred to in this section as "convention center projects" in such cities and are authorized to issue bonds to provide funds for accomplishing convention center projects and to pledge all or any part of the revenues from the tax levied by the city pursuant to this subchapter to pay the principal of, interest on, and fees and expenses in connection with the bonds.
A.C.A. §
The principal of and interest on all bonds issued under the authority of this subchapter shall be secured by a pledge of, and shall be payable from, all or any part of the revenues derived from the tax levied by the city pursuant to this subchapter or from all or any part of the revenues derived from the operation of the convention center project involved.5
As previously noted, A.C.A. §
The subchapter further contains a separate provision authorizing a city to proceed with the construction or acquisition of a convention center financed by other varieties of bonds. Specifically, A.C.A. §
(a)(1) Any city of the first class levying the tax and creating the commission as permitted in this subchapter is authorized to pledge all or any part of the revenues from the tax levied pursuant to this subchapter to the payment of principal of and interest on bonds issued by the city under the authority of any other law in effect, for the purpose of providing all, or part of, the funds for the acquisition, construction, reconstruction, extension, equipment, improvement, maintenance, or operation of any facility including, without limitation, auditoriums and parking facilities, which will be operated as a part of, or operated or utilized in connection with, or in support of, a convention center project.(2) Any municipality that has levied a tax, known as the hotel and restaurant tax [the hamburger tax], as authorized in §
26-75-602 (a), may pledge all or any part of the revenues derived from the hotel and restaurant tax to the payment of principal and interest on bonds issued by the municipality under the authority of §§14-170-201 -14-170-214 or any subsequent law and called tourism revenue bonds, or, to the extent necessary to match grant funds, in an amount at least equal to the proceeds of the bonds, to the payment of principal and interest on bonds issued by the municipality under the authority of §§14-186-101 and14-186-301 -14-186-312 , or any subsequent law.(b)(1) The pledge of revenues derived from the hotel and restaurant tax shall be by the ordinance of the municipality authorizing the bonds, called the authorizing ordinance, and, in the case of tourism revenue bonds, shall be subject to the approval of the city advertising and promotion commission.6
Section
With respect to the question of whether the AP commission might "administer" the building — a term you have not defined in your question — I can only opine generally that an AP commission may perform any task that falls within the authorized activities outlined in A.C.A. §
Finally, assuming the law and the facts support an AP commission's "administering" a facility purchased by a city using hamburger tax revenues, I am unable to opine whether that administration should proceed pursuant to a lease. I gather your question is whether if the AP commission is precluded from owning real estate outright, it might nevertheless exercise the desired control over the property through a lease arrangement with the city. Assuming an AP commission is so closely aligned with the city that created it that the commission might best be considered an arm of the city itself, it would appear to be unnecessary to effect the commission's administration through a lease arrangement. This arm-of-the-city interpretation holds a certain logical appeal inasmuch as the commission is created by the city, A.C.A. §
Aside from the purely legal question just discussed, factual issues exist regarding precisely what "administering" the buildings would entail. Only local counsel fully acquainted with all the details of the proposed transaction between the city and its AP commission would be situated to render advice regarding the need for or propriety of a lease arrangement. I am consequently unable to opine on this matter.
Question 2: Can a city purchase [a building] with cash from [hamburgertax] funds for use by the AP Commission as a visitors bureau? Is alease required for such arrangement?
For reasons set forth in my response to your previous question, I believe the answer to the first part of the current question is probably "no," rendering the second part of the question moot. As discussed above, I doubt that a city is authorized to conduct direct cash transactions using hamburger tax funds under any circumstances. However, legislative clarification on this issue appears warranted.
Question 3: Can a nonprofit entity purchase property with [hamburgertax] funds for a tourist promotion facility if the Commission approvesthe project?
In my opinion, assuming the transfer of funds were gratuitous, even if the transfer served a public purpose, the answer to this question would be "no." As discussed above, hamburger tax funds are public resources, and it would violate the provisions of Ark. Const. art.
Question 4: Can the AP Commission contract with a nonprofit entity topurchase a building for use as a visitors bureau?
In my opinion, "no." See response to question 3.
Assistant Attorney General Jack Druff prepared the foregoing opinion, which I hereby approve.
Sincerely,
MIKE BEEBE Attorney General
Despite the constitutional ban against the issuance of municipal bonds without popular approval, this court created an exception more than 50 years ago. Snodgrass v. City of Pocahontas,189 Ark. 819 ,75 S.W.2d 223 (1934). There the city, pursuant to a 1933 statute, adopted an ordinance authorizing the issuance of bonds without an election, to finance improvements to the municipally owned water works. This court approved the proposal, giving its reasons in two sentences that have been often quoted to justify the creation of additional exceptions to the constitutional prohibition:It was manifestly the intention of the framers of Amendment 13 to prohibit cities and towns from issuing interest-bearing evidence of indebtedness, to pay which the people would be taxed, or their property appropriated to pay the indebtedness, or any indebtedness that placed any burden on the taxpayers. It was not the intention to prohibit cities and towns from making improvements and pledging the revenue from the improvements so made alone to the payment of the indebtedness.
The Snodgrass opinion did not explain why it was manifest that the framers of Amendment 13 [since incorporated into Amendment 62] did not really mean what they said. . . . We believe the only proper and permanent course is for us simply to give effect to the plain language of the Constitution. It states that no city or county shall ever issue interest-bearing evidences of indebtedness without the consent of the electors.