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Anaheim’s current mayor, Tom Tait, has been fighting hard against tax incentives for projects likely to happen anyway. The issue is a 20-year city room tax rebate that Tait’s colleagues on the council are preparing to grant and the developers of two other proposed luxury hotels in the Disneyland vicinity—“a bizarre giveaway program to the influential and powerful,” as Tait labeled it in an op-ed this weekend in the Orange County Register. The rebate would be 70% of the city’s transient occupancy tax, which is 15% of room charges. Over 20 years, the city estimates, it would be writing checks to Disney totaling $267 million. The total for the three projects would be about $550 million. [UPDATE: The city council approved the tax giveaway Tuesday, 3-1.]
Read more from The LA Times.