Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, said counties maintain broad discretion on spending but noted that concerns had been raised in an earlier task force meeting about Salt Lake County spending the hotel room tax on golf course maintenance.

"Now, you have a lot of latitude, but we're concerned about that," Buttars said. "We don't want that to be able to be used to build new libraries — it's got to be on tourism. We don't see how maintaining your golf course is promoting tourism. So all we're saying is you can keep the latitude, but we'd like to see where it's going, and if you're spending all your transient tax on golf courses, we've got a problem."

Rep. Sheryl Allen, R-Bountiful, said having the tax-spending information would help state tourism officials make better decisions about their own tourism-promotion spending. The idea of the legislation is "not to take your money away but for us to make complementary decisions so that what we do is the best for the state," she said.

"Our intent is not to take your money," reiterated Rep. Peggy Wallace, R-West Jordan.

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E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com