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Gone are the TOURIST GO HOME bumper stickers of the 1970s. But in San Diego, Reinders says, "nothing comes easy."

Dutch-born and a Marriott manager for 21 years, he's both good and lucky. Tourism has grown handsomely in San Diego for the past six of his eight years as CEO of the Convention and Visitors Bureau. Our forte is mid-sized association meetings and trade shows.

A $216 million convention center expansion (opening Labor Day 2001) will lift our national ranking only from 39th to 19th. There are 46,000 San Diego hotel rooms; despite apprehensions within a cyclical industry, thousands more are planned.

Yet only one hotel is large enough to rank with major convention planners as a headquarters: the Marriott Marina. Nearby Hyatt Regency plans expansion well past the pivotal 1,000-room barrier. ConVis yearns for a third biggie on the adjacent Campbell site.

A city's visitor industry thrives on marketing and money. The primary source of both is TOT, the ubiquitous transient occupancy tax. In San Diego it's an undemanding 10.5 percent. But it will yield $100 million in the coming fiscal year, a sum equal to nearly one-fifth of the city's general-fund spending. Convis will spend $13.5 million of TOT. Some 200 community organizations receive grants through TOT.

Since TOT is levied largely on out-of-towners rather than local voters, politicians find it nearly irresistible.

Reinders and his board balance 1,700 ConVis tourism members, most of whom oppose any TOT rate increase, against politicians who seem ready to commit TOT funds into the blue-sky yonder, not always in ways his members endorse.

"Balboa Park, for instance," says Reinders, in a rare outburst of impatience, "hasn't really been on the mayor's map for eight years. It ought to be on everybody's map all the time."

The gyrations of TOT everywhere are usually upward. San Diego's 10.5 percent rate, adopted in 1997, provides a price edge for vying against more popular mid-sized convention cities.

New York City tested what is still presumed to be the TOT top when it raised its rate in 1994 to 19.25 percent, but has retreated to 13.25. Houston and San Antonio exceed 15 percent. San Francisco and Los Angeles are 14.

In San Diego, the City Council proposals for use of TOT funds range from police services to a new central library and ballpark. Some ConVis members see these as a long stretch from the language of this city's first TOT in 1964, pegged at 4 percent.

"Thank heavens," Reinders says, "for the tourism industry and TOT. Without them, this city would be up a creek." That goes too for the Port District, which built the original convention center and provides the site and one-third of its expansion cost.

The city's mission statement for TOT money reads this way:

" . . . to increase hotel occupancy and attract industry resulting in the generation of TOT and other revenue; to develop visitor-related facilities and support the City's cultural amenities and natural attractions."

Such language is built to be tugged and pulled. Like the epochal contract for redeveloping the Naval Training Center that the City Council will consider tomorrow, the devil is in the details.