DeMaio gives away control of Convention Center to donors

It wasn't just the huge slush fund for the mayor's office that DeMaio was busy working on last week. He was doing the bidding of another big group of donors: hoteliers.

DeMaio took a leading role on Tuesday to hand over control of booking at the Convention Center to hoteliers. They had made it a dealbreaker for the proposal to finance expanding the Convention Center by imposing a tax on the public without a public vote. Now, DeMaio has repeatedly and knowingly lied about this deal while trying to sell it to the public, so it's probably no surprise that he was leading the charge last week. The question is why?

Not because they'd be better at it. They handled the job until 2004, when they finally had the responsibility revoked becausethey spent all their time boozing and schmoozing clients for other things and never got around to the Convention Center.

Not because it would save any money -- the budget stays the same and actually detracts from basic maintenance needs.

Not because it would make more money -- there's been no financial analysis of the proposal at all. None. But fiscal hawk Carl DeMaio doesn't care. After all, he's received tens of thousands in campaign checks from the hotel industry, and ConVis, which is now in line to control the Convention Center, has a half a dozen big DeMaio donors. And as we know, he's all about the quid pro quo.

And so with DeMaio spearheading the push, hotels gained control of the Convention Center just as they were receiving their ballots to vote on imposing a new tax on the general public. The exact tax that DeMaio is trying to help along has been rejected twice by voters, and this time the public won't even get a say in the matter.

Instead of his usual song and dance about the importance of letting the public vote, DeMaio is cashing hotelier checks while orchestrating a way for them to avoid the public and raise taxes anyway.

Just another reminder that the only principle Carl DeMaio ever remains loyal to is his own personal benefit.