By David Cay Johnston

Ask our Monroe County government a simple question, and the government will pay a lawyer to decide whether to answer.

The question: How much does Monroe County collect from the 6 percent hotel tax? (The tax is a levy that the county budget says is "to promote and enhance tourism.")

You might think that number would be in Maggie Brooks' 799-page budget. It is not. Instead, we get only the "allocation" of hotel tax money to various agencies.

I e-mailed my question to the logical person, the county budget director, Susan Walsh. She would not answer.

Instead, Walsh passed my question to the Finance Department. Six days later, the new finance director, Scott Adair, e-mailed to say that he would not answer, either.

Instead, Adair wrote that "to ensure compliance with the Freedom of Information law," I must fill out a form.

No such requirement exists in state law, but the county and many other local governments require such forms.

My formal request sought four numbers: hotel tax "collections" each year from 2005 through 2008. A clerk told me that a lawyer will decide whether the Brooks administration will answer.

Tired of game-playing, I rang up Paul Haney, a CPA who is the ranking Democrat on the County Legislature's Ways and Means Committee. Surely Haney knows, right?

"Sorry," Haney said, explaining that the Brooks administration does not reveal such numbers to the minority party.

Contrast this with how Brooks endlessly touts tourism as a boon to local taxpayers. Earlier this month, the tourism-promotion agency VisitRochester released its annual visitor spending figures. Brooks boasted that they "reinforce what we've been saying all along... that tourism is an economic engine."

But when adjusted for inflation, the data show a sputtering engine. Total spending by visitors in 2008 dropped 3.9 percent from 2007. Lodging revenue fell 5.6 percent.

Furthermore, a graphic that appeared in the county budget until 2007 indicated that hotel occupancy revenue has been flat since 1990, after adjusting for inflation. (I asked Walsh for the data points for the graphic and why it vanished from the last two budgets, but, again, no answers.)

A recent report by the Center for Governmental Research estimated that just 59 percent of hotel rooms in Monroe County were rented out in 2008, weak demand that means some properties are struggling.

These figures show that the market is not demanding new hotels.

Yet in March, COMIDA, the county's industrial-development agency, voted multi-million-dollar tax breaks for Steven Congel of Denver, who wants to demolish part of Medley Centre to build a residential, retail, and hotel complex, adding perhaps 450 hotel rooms. Congel is part of the billionaire family that owns Carousel Mall in Syracuse.

With hotel revenues nearly flat since 1990, with 41 percent of rooms going begging and a new Hampton Inn about to open near Medley Centre, why would anyone want to build hotels here? Oh, that's right; Congel can hold the land for next to nothing in taxes (while the rest of us make up the difference) and then get tax-advantaged financing thanks to COMIDA.

Assuming that Congel actually builds, doing him a multi-million-dollar tax favor is tantamount to Brooks deciding to bankrupt several of the 62 existing hotels in Monroe County, because there is not enough business to go around.

What analysis did COMIDA do of hotel demand before committing your tax dollars to benefit Congel? COMIDA has yet to decide if they will reveal what research, if any, they did.

So while you pay for lawyers to mull my question about hotel tax revenues, here is a question taxpayers should ask Brooks, who holds herself out as a fiscal conservative:

Why would the county give huge tax favors at your expense to a rich Colorado man in a deal certain to destroy some existing local businesses?