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The higher room rate could cost the city in lost convention business, industry experts say.

But calling state lawmakers back to Olympia just for that issue appears unlikely, and most other fixes currently look murky.

The tax increase set for July 27 is one piece of possible fallout from Gov. Gary Locke's partial veto last month of a bill dealing with the hotel/motel tax.

The veto also jeopardizes $40 million in construction bonds for the Meydenbauer Center, but city officials are confident that a lawsuit filed in Thurston County Superior Court last Thursday will take care of that by reinstating Bellevue's authority to collect the tax. Locke, who said the problems created by the veto were unintentional, has thrown his support behind the lawsuit.

What is not clear is whether Locke or the lawsuit will be able to prevent the sales tax on hotel rooms from skyrocketing.

"It's a separate issue" said Bellevue Intergovernmental Relations Manager Karen Reed, but "we're doing everything humanly possible to see that there is not an increase in the tax rate."

The confusion created by the partial veto is an illustration of just how Byzantine tax law can be. In short, Locke's vetoinadvertently removed Bellevue's authority to levy the hotel motel tax by changing the effective date of the legislation.

Part of that tax is credited against the state's sales tax, which means that even though the city levies it, the rate doesn't go up. The tax money -- about $2 million per year -- is in essence diverted, in this case to pay for Meydenbauer Center.

But now, although the city can't divert the sales tax money, it expects to win in court its ability to levy the tax anyway, thus driving up the overall rate on rooms by 2 percent to 16.4 percent.

Predicting the impact is difficult, too.

"It's a pretty serious thing we're facing. We don't really know what the impact will be," said Bellevue Chamber of Commerce President Sarah Skoglund, who said her organization will push hard for a special session of the Legislature, tricky as that may be, to solve the problem.

"Even assuming this is corrected during the 1998 legislative session, this will have a significant long-term impact on hotels and convention center business here in Bellevue," said the draft of a letter to Locke the Bellevue chamber was working on yesterday.

Bellevue-based hotel industry consultant Wolfgang Rood said a 2 percent hike in the cost of a room could put the city's hotels at a competitive disadvantage when trying to lure conventions. "Planners take taxes into account when they decide where to hold meetings," he said.