A Corporation of Hamilton plan to pay $100,000 to a US organisation holding a conference on the Island has been called into question after it was revealed that former host cities had not been required to pay any fee.

The National Conference of Black Mayors, which represents 650 mayors across the US, will be holding its 40th annual conference in Bermuda in October as the guest of the municipality.

The Corporation has budgeted $100,000 to fund the conference, claiming that it will bring in hundreds of overseas delegates to the Island.

Confirmation that the event was going ahead was given by Deputy Mayor Donal Smith at a press conference last week.

At that press conference, Michael Blunt — mayor of the village of Chesilhurst, New Jersey, who claims to be the president of the NCBM — defended the fee, saying that host cities had typically paid his organisation $250,000 for the privilege of hosting the event.

But The Royal Gazette has contacted a number of city councils who have played host to the NCBM in recent years, and found that only one helped fund a conference with a payment to the organisation.

The NCBM held its 2013 and 2012 conferences in Atlanta, where it is based.

Local Government officials there claimed they did not pay the NCBM any funds to cover the cost of either convention, although it did place adverts in conference literature.

“The city made three payments to NCBM in the last two years. $1500 dues for our mayor, $3500 and $5000 for ads in the 2012 and 2013 programmes,” a City of Atlanta spokesman said.

The Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau also denied giving the NCBM any cash donations, saying that it “has not ever provided NCBM with a payout to host the conference”.

Taxpayers in Cincinnati, which hosted the conference in 2010, did not make any financial contribution to the NCBM and neither did the residents of Las Vegas, where the conference was held in 2009.

“We did not provide any financial assistance to this group nor did we seek any from them,” one official told The Royal Gazette.

Only one of eight former host cities contacted by this newspaper could confirm that it had assisted the NCBM with covering the cost of a convention — Baton Rouge, Louisiana, paid $150,000 to the group when it hosted the conference in 2007.

But that year city officials had a $41 million budget surplus, which it needed to spend on “one-off” projects.

And on the guest list at that year’s conference were then-US Democratic party presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, along with celebrities actor Danny Glover and R&B singer Erykah Badu.

Contacted by The Royal Gazette yesterday, Mayor Blunt initially maintained that host cities had paid his organisation $250,000 to cover the cost of putting on conferences.

“That’s what they did in Atlanta, they paid us a fee for the conference — whoever hosts the conference will pay a hosting fee,” he said.

Asked to provide examples of cities that had paid his organisation, Mayor Blunt said he was aware that an NCBM event held in Senegal, Africa, had been partially funded by local government cash.

But when confronted with this newspaper’s findings, he acknowledged that he had no records to show that $250,000 payments had been made to the NCBM for annual conferences, which to date have always been held in the US.

Instead, he said he had been told by NCBM Executive Director Vanessa Williams that fees were typically paid.

Ms Williams was fired by the NCBM last September after failing to cooperate with an internal audit, although she is challenging that ruling.

She is also accused of spending $600,000 of NCBM funds on personal expenses.

Although the NCBM decided last December to hold this year’s convention in Bermuda, there is no mention of the event on the organisation’s website.

At last week’s press conference, Mayor Blunt said he hoped the website would be updated this week.

But asked for an update yesterday, he said the website could not be updated until the Corporation had paid its $100,000 fee to the NCBM.

“That’s something that you’ll have to take up with Donal Smith and the Corporation,” he said.