May 23, 2017, WASHINGTON – Last week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a bill to remove property-specific sales and tax data from the Texas State Comptroller’s public website. The bill instead designates the information as public information accessible via open records requests.
The bill was lauded by the Asian American Hotel Owners Association and the Texas Hotel and Lodging Association. Together they urged Texas lawmakers to adopt the bill, which passed the legislature with a nearly unanimous vote.
Chip Rogers, president and CEO of AAHOA, thanked Abbott for signing the bill into law.
“Gov. Abbott is a champion for Texas small businesses, and we thank him for signing this bill into law,” Rogers said.
“We are truly grateful to Scott Joslove and the entire Texas Hotel and Lodging Association team who worked tirelessly with lawmakers for more than two years to ensure that this bipartisan bill was enacted into law,” Rogers added. “Scott and the team also worked to create consensus among all groups interested in this bill, from media organizations to the hotel industry, and these efforts underscore the tremendous value of AAHOA’s special partnership with TH&LA.”
The bill was authored by Texas Sen. Kel Seliger (R, Amarillo) and becomes effective immediately.
AAHOA is the largest hotel owners association in the world. The more than 16,000 AAHOA members own almost one in every two hotels in the United States. With billions of dollars in property assets and hundreds of thousands of employees, AAHOA members are core economic contributors in virtually every community in the United States. As an association, AAHOA is a proud defender of free enterprise and the foremost current-day example of realizing the American Dream.
