COLUMBUS — A new law necessary to expand the Albert B. Sabin Cincinnati Convention Center has cleared an important first hurdle — passage by the State Government Committee in the Ohio House.

        The proposed law, which had been stalled in committee for months but passed Tuesday in an 11-0 vote, would allow Hamilton County to raise its hotel bed tax from the current 3 percent maximum to 6.5 percent.

        The higher tax would raise about $8 million a year and is the cornerstone for the 30-year, $198 million financing plan that will allow the center's expansion and renovation.

        The bill, which still must be passed by the full House and the Senate, also would allow the city of Cincinnati to raise its bed tax from a 3-percent ceiling to 4 percent.

        Hamilton County commissioner Todd Portune said the county will take action this morning to create a Convention Facilities Authority, which would have the responsibility of collecting and spending the expansion money. The deadline for creating the authority is today.

        “There may still be some work to do locally to put all the pieces together,” Mr. Portune said.

        That would be true to form for this complicated financing deal, which has taken a variety of shapes since originally announced by Mr. Portune and Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken in January.

        The original plan was blasted by suburban hoteliers and government officials. They feared the tax rate — a combination of the county bed tax, sales tax, and municipal bed tax — would be so high at 16.5 percent that visitors would pass by the suburban properties for lower tax rates in other counties.

        Since then, Mr. Portune has been working with Sharonville Mayor Virgil Lovitt on a compromise.

        The latest plan is to keep debt service payments from the 1984 expansion — being made by both the city and the county until 2005 — on the books for an additional 30 years.

        That money would be used as a rollback to lower the tax rate in suburban communities. Some of the tax money would also be given to a northern convention and visitor's bureau for marketing.

        Mayor Luken said he doesn't know how the bill would affect the city's convention center plan, or even what it contains.

        “I hate to sound like Bill Clinton, but I don't know what the definition of it is,” Mr. Luken said. “They have significantly changed this proposal since it was introduced, and I'm not sure what Commissioner Portune has done with the northern suburbs.”

        Mr. Portune said that's not true, adding that he has e-mailed Mr. Luken the details of the new proposal and kept him up to speed every step of the way.

        Mark Schutte, general manager of two Red Roof Inns in Sharonville, has been acting as a spokesman for suburban concerns. He said the lower countywide tax rate is acceptable.

        “It's palatable,” he said. “If this is the way it's going to go, then we achieved what we wanted to achieve.”

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