The Greater Cincinnati Convention & Visitors Bureau could find itself $1 million poorer next year, to help fund a similar organization promoting hotels in the county suburbs.

        Hamilton County Commissioner John Dowlin introduced a resolution Wednesday that would take a quarter of the county's 3 percent bed tax revenue and send it to the new Northern Hamilton County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

        That amounts to about $1 million annually out of the Cincinnati bureau's $4.9 annual budget.

        Although all three commissioners said they favor funding the northern bureau, Mr. Dowlin's idea was shelved for a week so that county staffers can study what impact it would have on the Cincinnati bureau.

        Still, it is the first concrete step taken toward funding the new visitors bureau.

        The new bureau is something northern hotels say they need because the county is about to raise its bed tax to 6.5 percent to help pay for an expansion of the Albert B. Sabin Cincinnati Convention Center.

        Those hotels say their tax rate (15.5 percent when city bed taxes and sales tax are added on) will be so high that travelers will pass them by for lower rates in Warren and Butler counties.

        “We're going down the path of increasing the hotel tax for the benefit of the Sabin Center,” Mr. Dowlin said. “It seems fair to me that we promote all of the attractions in the area.”

        State legislators recently passed a law that allows the county to raise its bed tax from the 3 percent ceiling. The increase will be the cornerstone of a $198 million financing plan to expand Cincinnati's convention center.

        Sharonville Mayor Virgil Lovitt, spokesman for the suburban hotels, said those properties want a percentage of the bed tax revenue so it can grow over time.

        Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken hates the idea of a competing bureau. He said it will “put a bullet in the brain of regionalism.”

        Still, Mr. Luken said the idea probably wouldn't affect the financing plan for the Sabin center.

        “My focus is the expansion, and it doesn't seem to take any money away from that,” Mr. Luken said. “It doesn't sound like it will make the financing plan any more difficult than it already is.”

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