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"                      <p class=\"imgtitle\">Burke</p>            EAST ST. LOUIS &ndash; Online travel companies dropped two bombs on Fairview Heights, weakening the last local remnant of a grandiose class action that would have held them responsible for municipal room taxes in 50 Illinois cities.<br /> <br /> In a Jan. 21 brief, seven companies notified U.S. District Judge David Herndon that a federal judge in North Carolina cleared them of liability for room taxes.<br /><br />  Their brief, by Robert Shultz of Edwardsville, also challenged for the first time the validity of the room tax ordinance in Fairview Heights.<br /><br />  Shultz claimed the city should have reenacted the tax after acquiring home rule power.<br /><br />  \"The city never did so,\" he wrote.<br /><br />  \"It only removed an exemption from the old law,\" he wrote.<br /><br />  Now the city council could face an inquiry into its financial foundation with nothing to gain but a few thousand dollars in room taxes.<br /><br />  Fairview Heights originally proposed a class action on behalf of cities except Chicago, where the tax ordinance differed from the model the others copied.<br /><br />  Herndon denied the city's motion for class certification last March.<br /><br />  \"Plaintiff has failed to precisely identify a class of which it is a member,\" he wrote.<br /><br />  He held that even if the city amended the class definition, a class action would be impossible to manage.<br /><br />  Since then Fairview Heights has pursued its own tax claims against <br />13 companies, though the claims may not exceed a dollar per room.<br /><br />  Richard Burke of St. Louis, representing the city, wrote this year that Priceline rented 3,314 rooms in Fairview Heights from 1999 to <br />2006.<br /><br />  He wrote that Orbitz rented 524 rooms from 2004 to 2008.<br /><br />  He wrote that the city computed the taxes due and provided them to defendants.<br /><br />  They must make up the shortfall, he wrote.<br /><br />  He didn't specify how much, but the North Carolina case sheds light on the puny dimensions of the city's claim.<br /><br />  A North Carolina county with a three percent room tax presented an example of a company paying $70 for a room and selling it online for $100.<br /><br />  The disputed $30 difference, at three percent, equals 90 cents.<br /><br />  At that rate, even if Herndon ruled against them, Priceline and Orbitz together would owe $3,554.20.<br /><br />  Shultz filed his brief in support of a pending motion for summary judgment.<br /><br />  In the event that his North Carolina bomb and home rule bomb didn't hit his target, he also argued that Fairview Heights can't <br />tax transactions that don't occur there.<br /><br />  Herndon hasn't set a hearing on the motion."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://madisonrecord.com/stories/510566067-online-travel-companies-challenge-fairview-heights-room-tax-ordinance>