Normally, news that a government-related agency’s budget is growing would be cause for concern for taxpayers. But in the case of the Butler County Tourism and Convention Bureau, a larger budget is no cause for alarm. In fact, it’s good news.

The first reason it’s good news is that the tax is paid, mostly, by other people — tourists. The second reason is that the tourism dollars are producing results.

The county tourism bureau is funded primarily by a 3-percent bed tax on hotels and bed and breakfast facilities. A larger tourism budget means more bed-tax revenue, which means more people coming to Butler County and staying overnight. And as the number of hotel rooms in the county grows — now about 2,000 — bed tax revenue will likely see further increases.

Tourists pay the bed-tax and that helps the tourism bureau do more marketing to attract more tourists — generating more bed-tax revenue to grow the bureau’s marketing efforts further . . . to attract more tourist and more bed-tax revenue.

It’s a virtuous cycle.

Last week, the tourism bureau approved a $1.418 million spending plan for 2013-14, up about 5 percent from last year.

While $1.4 million is a substantial amount of money, the tourism bureau is producing results. Among those results has been the creation of a central clearinghouse for events, promotion and marketing to bring more people — and their dollars — to Butler County.

And tourism is a major contributor to Butler County’s economy, generating about $480 million in 2010.

In addition to helping to market existing events, county tourism officials work to attract new events to the county. The most recent examples are the chain saw artist event earlier this month and upcoming Pyrotechnics Guild International (PGI) convention being held Aug. 10-17 at Cooper’s Lake Campground in Worth Township. The fireworks event is expected to bring 150,000 visitors to the county.

Beyond bringing existing events to Butler County, tourism officials have also created new events, notably the Bantam Jeep Heritage Festival, which will mark its third year this summer.

The tourism bureau’s website, www.VisitButlerCounty.com, features an online calendar. The month-by-month listings let visitors to the website see upcoming events. The calendar of events can also help groups planning new events, by showing existing events on the schedule and thus help avoid a conflict when setting a date a the new event.

In the past, tourism in Butler County just sort of happened. Individual organizations and events did their own marketing and promotion, but it was fairly haphazard and certainly not coordinated countywide.

With bed-tax dollars funding ongoing and coordinated marketing to encourage tourism by promoting longstanding events, bringing new events to the county and creating additional home-grown events such as the Jeep festival, tourism in Butler County has been elevated to a professional level that clearly evident and that is producing results.

The recent growth in bed-tax money, as well as membership dues, will allow the county tourism bureau to hire a new sales employee and a new administrative employee to join the existing staff of six full-time and two part-time employees.

Those hires should help bring more tourism dollars to Butler County, enabling further growth in the tourism bureau’s effectiveness — and the virtuous cycle.