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Attorneys for both Multnomah County and opponents of a plan to use public money to partially finance a $197.5 million hotel near the Oregon Convention Center made their case Monday for whether the financing plan should go before voters.

The proposed 600-room hotel would be built using $60 million in Metro-issued revenue bonds, $14 million of government subsidies and $4 million from a Portland Development Commission loan. The remaining $119.5 million would be paid by the developer – a joint venture between Minneapolis-based Mortenson Development Inc. and Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels Corp.

John DiLorenzo, an attorney with Davis Wright Tremaine, argued that with roughly 12,500 signatures collected, voters should decide whether room tax revenues generated by the hotel should be used to repay $60 million in Metro-backed bonds for the project.

DiLorenzo said that approving transient lodging taxes for a hotel project amounted to a legislative decision that could be subject to voter approval, and not an administrative one.

“We believe we should be able to ask voters (whether) we want to create a new bucket or not, because the uses for the tax have changed,” he said.

County officials responded by saying that the decision to approve bonding for the project fell within the framework of how the lodging taxes could be used. They added that the project will bring significant convention business to the area.

Multnomah County Judge Eric Bloch heard oral arguments and will make a decision within the next couple of weeks. Meanwhile, he instructed election officials to begin counting the signatures collected by the opponents to the hotel financing plan so that they would be verified by the time he makes his decision, according to Judge Bloch’s office.