When the Green Fee was first introduced, the pitch was fairly straightforward: raise the TAT by 0.75 percentage points and create a dedicated funding source for environmental issues, guided in part by an advisory council assembled by the Governor.
We warned at the time that the structure felt eerily familiar to the original transient accommodations tax (TAT), which was initially created as a dedicated tourism marketing fund before gradually becoming part of the general fund. And now the Legislature is already heavily reshaping the Green Fee process. Lawmakers replaced or modified roughly 40% of the council’s original project recommendations during budget negotiations, inserting their own priorities while cutting or reducing several of the council’s recommended initiatives.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the projects are bad. But it does reinforce a concern many in the industry raised early on: whether the Green Fee would remain dedicated or gradually become another flexible pool of state spending funded by visitors.
