OCEAN CITY, Md. - A proposal to raise hotel room taxes in Worcester County, specifically focused on Ocean City faces an uncertain future.
The proposal would raise the rate from 5 to 6 percent.
But some Democratic Senators from the Western Shore took issue with signing on to a tax increase.
Senator Mary Beth Carozza, a Republican from Worcester County says this is local legislation and deserves local courtesy from the General Assembly.
Carozza says this is merely an "enabling bill" for some Eastern Shore counties, meaning County governments would have to be the ones to actually implement an increase.
She pointed out that Worcester County's current 5% room tax is still much lower than many other jurisdictions.
For example, Baltimore City's room tax rate is 9.5%.
Susan Jones with the Ocean City Hotel-Motel-Restaurant Association says the rate increase would've made a huge difference.
"Tourism is our only economy so we have to do everything we can to protect it. We don't have a lot of manufacturing, we don't have any manufacturing on the Island, it is all about tourism," she said.
Jones continued "We need to do everything we can to be able to service the visitors that are here, to grow the number of people that come to grow our season. So we are disappointed to say the least that this didn't get pushed through especially considering this was really local legislation."
Senate Minority Leader Stephen Hershey moved to send the bill back to committee, which keeps it alive.
But with just about two weeks left in this session, it is appearing unlikely this bill will pass this session.