Airbnb is Monroe County’s largest hotel—and we let it write the rules

In late 2024, New York State enacted a law requiring counties to create a registry of short-term rental properties, unless counties opted out by the end of 2025. The goal was to give local governments the basic information needed to understand and regulate a rapidly growing lodging market operating inside residential neighborhoods.

Monroe County chose to opt out of that requirement, through legislation submitted at the last-minute as a Matter of Urgency that bypassed the committee process.

To understand why, I obtained hundreds of pages of emails, draft legislation, and tax agreements between Airbnb, its lobbyists, and Monroe County officials. Those documents show how our county government worked with a powerful, multibillion-dollar corporation to shape policy behind closed doors, exaggerate risks that did not exist, and successfully sidelined the County Legislature—all while claiming to act in the public interest.

Airbnb lobbied counties across the state to opt out of the registry, but Monroe County was the only large urban upstate county to do so. That’s likely because Airbnb’s lobbyist in Monroe County was Nicholas Morelle, son of Rep. Joe Morelle. County Executive Adam Bello refers to the elder Morelle as his mentor. They are extremely close, giving the young lobbyist extraordinary access to county officials.

That access mattered. The documents, which cover a seven-month period, show Airbnb working directly with county attorneys to review draft legislation, object to specific provisions, and ultimately sign off on the final version of the law before it was ever introduced to legislators. At the same time, the county was negotiating an updated tax agreement with Airbnb from the original one signed in 2018—a fact never disclosed during legislative deliberations.

To understand what was really at stake, it helps to understand scale. Based on Monroe County’s own occupancy tax receipts, Airbnb now accounts for roughly one in 10 lodging nights here. That makes it, in effect, the county’s largest hotel. But unlike hotels, Airbnb is not required to register its properties, disclose addresses, submit to routine audits, or provide booking-level records. We regulate 105 hotels down to the dollar, yet we have no clear picture of where Airbnb operates, how many properties exist, and ownership of the units.

The Bello administration’s central argument against a registry was that opting in might jeopardize the county’s ability to collect occupancy taxes—of which Airbnb paid nearly $1.2 million in 2024, funding local cultural and tourism attractions. That claim that Airbnb would sever ties with Monroe County if we created a registry was repeated publicly and treated as fact. It was also false.

Airbnb collects occupancy taxes under what’s called a voluntary collection agreement, or VCA. A VCA allows Airbnb to collect the county’s 6 percent occupancy tax from guests at the time of booking and remit it to the county in a single payment, rather than forcing hundreds of individual hosts to register, file returns, and remit taxes themselves—a logistical nightmare for hosts that would undermine the platform.

In other words, Airbnb cannot abandon a VCA without hurting its own business—nearly $20 million in taxable receipts in Monroe County in 2024 alone. And in its correspondence with the county, Airbnb admits it has never terminated a VCA. The idea that tax collection would collapse if Monroe County created a registry was always an empty threat.

So why does it matter that a new VCA was being negotiated at the same time as the opt-out law?

Because had county legislators been allowed to read the new VCA, we would have understood that creating a registry would not have jeopardized tax collection. We did not see the new VCA because the Legislature does not vote on VCAs, per an interpretation of the county charter that gives the finance director the authority to decide how to collect taxes. The Bello administration did not tell us a new one was about to be executed.

The new VCA locked in Airbnb’s participation—while simultaneously restricting what information the county could obtain and how it could be used. The opt-out law and the VCA functioned as a package deal: tax remittance was preserved, but oversight was surrendered. Legislators were never told they were being asked to approve one half of a deal with Airbnb.

Other counties understood that Airbnb’s early threats not to collect and remit taxes were a bluff. Erie County has a short-term rental registry and a VCA. Airbnb continues to collect and remit taxes there without disruption. Monroe County officials knew—or should have known—this was possible. Yet legislators and the public were told otherwise.

In our final meeting of 2025, the Legislature voted 21-8 to opt out of creating a short-term rental registry. Some of my colleagues who voted to opt out said they felt rushed and reasoned we could still create a registry in the future.

What Airbnb actually feared was not paying taxes. The correspondence with Monroe County officials showed it feared data. A registry would make the true scale of Airbnb’s operations visible. Address-level information would allow the county to identify concentrations of listings, distinguish between casual hosts and commercial operators, and begin governing a hotel-scale business operating inside residential neighborhoods. Airbnb fought aggressively to keep that information out of the county’s hands—and Monroe County agreed.

The result is a system that relies on blind trust. We audit hotels routinely and recover underpayments when they occur. With Airbnb, the county receives aggregated totals and little else. Oversight is replaced with dashboards the company controls.

Airbnb is Monroe County’s largest hotel. We chose to let it write the rules.

Rachel Barnhart, D-17^th District, has been a Monroe County legislator since 2019.

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