Allentown's NIZ Could Increase County Taxes

"The Morning Call" is reporting the state budget includes NIZ hotel tax grab-- "Under the new rules, the tax paid by guests staying in rooms at the Renaissance and Holiday Inn hotels downtown will be set aside in a fund. The amount of hotel tax revenue generated before the zone was created in 2011 would be subtracted and sent to its usual recipients, and the rest would be made available to developers of new hotels and hoteliers undertaking capital upgrades."

Rules.. What Rules?
They keep changing. Apparently State Sen. Pat Browne, R-Lehigh sneaked this into an already cash strapped state budget w/o notifying or consulting with any of those affected. Three problems I have with this..(1) $79,491 per year went to Lehigh County which was used to pay down debt on Coca-Cola Park home of the LV IronPigs. If the county no longer receives that money property owners in Lehigh County could be required to make up the difference. Senator's Browne's response was basically... tough baloney.. "he argued, the county should not have anticipated using any of the hotel taxes the NIZ created to help pay off those bonds." Yeah well thanks for changing the rules after the budgets were set and the NIZ funding game began.

(2) How come developers (those in the NIZ already receiving huge tax breaks affording them to undercut competitors) shouldn't be using their own windfall profits for those things Browne says this new revenue stream can be used for?

(3) Senator Browne further argued he feels county taxpayers already benefited enough from the increased property revenues. Apparently he feels developers haven't?
There were a lot of burgs in Lehigh County around Allentown who didn't want their local and state tax dollars diverted. Yeah well looks like some of them will end up in the NIZ developers pockets after all.

Here's State Senator Pat Browne's entire 16th District.
He wasn't elected just to represent Allentown's interests, but all the county's

Who's the NIZ benefiting the most... county taxpayers?
I doubt it because I don't see taxes going down for anyone.