WALKER COUNTY, Ga. — A state review board says Walker County’s handling of hotel-motel tax money tied to the McLemore golf resort shows gaps in transparency and documentation, even though investigators found no outright violations of Georgia law.
The Georgia Hotel-Motel Tax Performance Review Board released a preliminary report Thursday detailing an investigation into complaints that county officials used tourism tax revenue to benefit the private resort on Lookout Mountain. (Read the full report by scrolling down to the end of this story).
Walker County and its Chamber of Commerce generally followed the state’s hotel-motel tax framework but failed to provide enough detail to verify that restricted funds were spent strictly on tourism-related purposes, said the Department of Community Affairs, which prepared the report.
Investigators found that in October 2024, McLemore got an $18,967 payment labeled as an “administrative fee,” which was not reported as a tourism or development expense in the county’s annual tax filings…