A company led by businessman James A. Cosentino has chipped away at the fortune in hotel occupancy taxes it owes Erie County and its taxpayers.

After paying $42,700 in June, Luxury Lodging paid roughly $106,800 Friday, putting it back on schedule in turning over the county bed taxes collected from guests years ago.

Cosentino’s company can discharge the debt, which includes interest and penalties, by staying on course and meeting a final balloon payment of more than $300,000 next year.

For some 14 years, county officials have tried to collect from Cosentino, a generous donor to politicians on the state, federal and local levels, including the county executives who negotiated his agreements to return the money over time.

Cosentino’s former showplace hotel near Buffalo Niagara International Airport — a Ramada Renaissance that later became a Radisson — was the preferred site for Democratic Party galas in the late 1980s and early 1990s, even though it was one of his establishments that had charged bed taxes and then kept them.

Aides to then-County Executive Dennis T. Gorski wrote the first payment schedule in 1993. When Cosentino fell behind, he got a new schedule in 1996. Then in 2003, when Cosentino still owed more than $1 million, County Executive Joel A. Giambra’s staff drafted a third schedule — after Cosentino became current by paying almost $880,000.

Soon after, his companies fell behind again on the more than $500,000 debt that remained. As of May, he was more than 20 months behind, according to a county audit completed at the time.

All the while, county officials protected Cosentino’s identity, citing the 1974 county law that levied a bed tax. It assured hotel and motel owners secrecy on the amount of tax they remit so that no one, aside from a few finance officials, could learn their sales volume.

County officials in recent weeks refused to grant The Buffalo News’ requests for access to the three repayment agreements, even though the state’s leading expert on New York’s Freedom of Information Law, Robert J. Freeman, said the public is entitled to see those documents.

The News, through other methods, obtained the county’s June 6 collection letters to Cosentino as president of Luxury Lodging and Dynamic Enterprises. The letters confirmed he is the hotelier whom county auditors were spotlighting in May when they cited the government’s lax effort to collect from a certain owner.

With a renewed focus on the case, Cosentino company officials have made the two large payments.

Meanwhile, county leaders are trying to shred the veil of secrecy that the county law creates because it neutralizes a heavy enforcement weapon: public scrutiny.

“A valuable tool — transparency — is removed from our arsenal in compelling a hotel to follow the law,” County Comptroller Mark C. Poloncarz said in a recent letter to the Legislature. “In effect, violators of that law are shielded from public scrutiny by the very law itself.”

Poloncarz says he wants the law changed and has suggested new wording. But he, too, has refused to make the repayment agreements public on the advice of county lawyers. In the May audit that criticized tax collectors for letting the debt linger, Poloncarz’s staff referred to the hotel owner only as “Beta.”

Legislator Cynthia E. Locklear, D-West Seneca, proposed that today’s Legislature approve a statement clarifying the intent of the 1974 law. It was never to be “a shield to protect delinquent entities,” Locklear’s resolution says.

She said a majority of lawmakers are willing to approve the statement at Thursday’s meeting. From there, she believes county officials should make the repayment agreements public and officially unmask the delinquent hotel owner.

However, County Attorney Laurence K. Rubin says the Legislature’s statement will not be enough to name the hotelier. He said the law itself will need to be changed, a more cumbersome process but one that could be completed within a few weeks if lawmakers agree with the strategy.

When The News recently called Cosentino for comment about his bed-tax debt, it instead received a written statement from Luxury Lodging, et. al., promising a payment of $106,760 by July 6.

County officials confirmed the money arrived Friday as predicted, but from the entity they call Beta.

mspina@buffnews.com

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