JERSEY BOARD APPROVES permit fees for short-term rentals with some opposition

By Editor | June 17, 2026 |

By Steven Spencer

The Jersey County Board approved two changes to the Tourism Ordinance that affect short-term rentals at their regular meeting on Tuesday, June 9.
The first change voted on was to establish a $100 permit/registration fee for hotel/motel short-term rentals, which passed with a 9-3 vote, with board members Jeremy Beasley, Brian Figge and Sheila Beers voting in opposition to the fee.
“Any existing businesses are exempt from paying that registration fee,” Vice-Chairman Kara Ontis said. “So it’s just new hotel/motel Airbnbs that are established in Jersey County as of July 1, 2026.”
The second item was a change to the Tourism Ordinance to include a 5% hotel/motel tax on short-term rentals. Ontis said the ordinance already had the tax in place for hotels and motels, the change now includes it for short-term rentals like Airbnb.
Beasley expressed strong opposition to both changes, expressing concerns with new permits and additional taxes.
“It doesn’t seem good to be charging people a registration fee just so we can tax them,” Beasley said.
Board member Ed Koenig asked if there had been a permit/registration fee in the past, which there had not been.
Chairman Mark Wagner said the permit fee is just an administration fee and will follow suit with what the cities of Grafton and Jerseyville are doing.”
“It’s an administration fee,” Chairman Wagner said. “They have to come in, let us know their business and the location, or number of locations, it could be multiple locations.”
Beasley expressed concerns with the 5% tax, questioning if it was something the county was opting into or a requirement.
Ontis said they would be opting into the 5% tax on short-term rentals, but are following what the state has put in place.
“It’s following in suit with what the State of Illinois put in place for the hotel/motel tax that includes short-term rentals,” Ontis said. “The State of Illinois as of July 1, 2025, included short-term rentals within that hotel/motel tax.”
According to the Illinois Department of Revenue, hosting platforms for short-term rentals were subject to the Hotel Operators Occupation Tax (HOOT) collected by the state if they met the definition of “re-renters of hotel rooms.”
The state defines “re-renters of hotel rooms’ as “persons who are not employed by a hotel operator but who, either directly or indirectly, through agreements of arrangements with third parties, collect or process the payment of rent from a guest of a hotel or a hotel room located in Illinois and either obtain the right or authority to grant control of, access to, or occupancy of a hotel room in Illinois to a guest of the hotel; or facilitate the booking of a hotel room located in Illinois.”
Beasley stated he would rather see the state force the county to implement the tax than the board do so voluntarily.
“If we’re being forced to do it, we need to make them force us to do it rather than do it voluntarily,” Beasley said. “We’re sitting here with 12 republicans on the board that are supposed to be opposed to taxes and here we are putting in new fees and new taxes.”
The motion to accept the change to the ordinance passed, 11-1.
Chairman Wagner also noted that the change clears up some language in the ordinance.
“It had in there where we were to collect in any business within the county,” he said. “So if a business in Grafton was already paying tax to Grafton, according to our ordinance, they had to pay to the county too. It was never done that way. The county did not collect those taxes, but that’s what the ordinance said.”
The ordinance now excludes any community that is already collecting a tourism tax, Wagner said.