As a result of late changes demanded by local business leaders and politicians, Virginia Beach Del. Nancy Guy (D-Virginia Beach) has withdrawn the bill written by the City Council, and which she sponsored in the Virginia House of Delegates, that would have created a tourism authority for the City of Virginia Beach.

The 2021 session of the Virginia Legislative Assembly convened on 13 January and is scheduled to adjourn on 27 February. The City Council decided that allowed too little time to draft intelligent changes to the bill.

As proposed, the tourism authority would have taken over the tourism marketing work currently being done by city employees - some of whose positions would have been moved to the new authority - in order to make it possible for local businesses to contribute to staff salaries (so raise pay and attract talent), and to be able to avoid city contract bidding rules.

Business leaders who objected to the bill as drafted wanted changes to include specifying the makeup of the authority's board, and to state that the authority would not be able to tax city residents

Also some Republican legislators said they felt they had been excluded from the process of drafting the tourism authority bill.

The City Council plans to revisit the proposal after the 2021 legislative session.

Stay tuned.