Tough choices must be made in the current economic climate, and a decision announced last week by a state official vividly illustrates the direct impact some of those choices have on the safety of Kansas residents and visitors to the state.

Acting Secretary of Agriculture Josh Svaty has announced that his department is temporarily suspending its safety and sanitation inspections of hotels, motels and other overnight lodgings in Kansas. The agency’s budget was cut by $303,000 in the governor’s last round of reductions; the lodging inspection program costs $240,000.

The agriculture department inspects and licenses 825 lodging facilities across the state. Because inspections are required for licensing, it’s not clear how the renewal of licenses will be handled.

A recent editorial in the Hays Daily News brings home the impact of the dropped inspections. The newspaper reported on a flurry of complaints about the city’s only self-contained convention hotel facility. The director of the Hays Convention and Visitors Bureau said complaints had focused on the sleeping accommodations, such things as mold and other unclean conditions in the rooms, key mix-ups and poor desk service. She was distressed to learn that the agriculture department had canceled inspections because it “was about the only mechanism in place to get things changed there.”

One would hope that the pressures of the marketplace and people simply refusing to stay at this hotel would prompt the situation to be corrected, but that may not always be the case in Hays or even Lawrence. In the meantime, the cities may lose tourist dollars and gain a negative reputation that lingers long after problems at the hotel have been corrected.

This is just one small piece of the state budget cuts, but it could have a big impact. Within a week of the announcement, a Google search revealed at least a half-dozen Internet travel sites, including kayak.com and travel.aol.com, who were reporting the Kansas hotel inspection news with teaser lines like “Travelers beware.”

Like a dirty hotel room, even this temporary suspension of inspections may create a poor impression that will stick with Kansas travelers for years to come.