I have a bone to pick with Steve Clark, President and CEO of the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce. Recently Steve has been in the news a lot advocating for a city business license and against having event organizers who use city property open their books.

Brian discussed the business license issue last week, but I would like to add a few thoughts. Brian correctly asserted the license fee amounts to a new tax, but the question remains – Why is the Chamber of Commerce advocating for a new tax on business? I think the answer is two-fold. First, in the wake of the financial downturn city budgets are tightening, and Fayetteville has not entirely avoided this pain. A significant portion of the chambers budget comes from the city coffers. So, what is being spun to the public as an attempt to help businesses may actually be an attempt to create a dedicated tax to support the chamber. Second, a list of all businesses in Fayetteville would be extremely helpful in helping the chamber collect more membership dues.

From where I sit, the business license looks like a chamber attempt to reach into other people’s pockets to support their activities while having the city crack down on those who do not comply. The license fee would likely give the chamber a guaranteed revenue stream at a time when membership dues are falling and city funding is uncertain. So what’s with all this, “We just want to help business.” All we ask is for a little honesty, Steve.

Last night Steve showed up at the City Council meeting to rail against councilman Matthew Petty’s proposal to have events that make use of city property and last longer than two days open their books. Look, I do not know if Petty’s proposal was well written legally, and it is possible that the proposal represented an undue burden for event organizers.  That said, the thrust of Steve’s criticism of the proposal did not rest on this perfectly reasonable ground. Instead he tried to make the claim that requiring more openness from people who use city property is equivalent to calling them liars. The Northwest Arkansas Times quoted Steve saying

“It appears — the way it is written — the wrong that it tries to address, is that people cheat on their taxes,” Clark declared, his baritone voice booming. “It tries to say that people are trying to cheat the city.

“This says, ‘You know what, we just don’t trust you. We just don’t believe you tried to do right,’” said Clark, who also serves on the Bikes Blues & BBQ board. “That’s an insult.”

So, let me get this straight, it is insulting to ask people who receive a subsidy from the city (land use is a subsidy) to be open and honest about their financial records? In Steve’s world of good ole’ boys and cronies we should all just trust each other and everything will work out right in the end. But, it seems to me the State of Arkansas already trusted Steve, and that trust was betrayed when he was convicted for misusing a state credit card.

Steve revels himself as the wost kind of  political hack when he advocates for bad policy like an arbitrary tax on business and less openness in government. His latest actions seem to indicate that he cares less about the substance of the policy, and more about whether or not he will benefit from it.