The battle between Gov. Rick Scott and House Speaker Richard Corcoran turned up another notch Tuesday, the eve of today’s first committee hearing on legislation that would abolish Enterprise Florida and Visit Florida. The intra-Republican fight is entertaining, and it pits the governor’s pet programs of job incentives and tourism promotion against Corcoran’s uncompromising free-market ideology. But there is a middle ground, and the agencies should be streamlined rather than abolished.
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Enterprise Florida was created 20 years ago as the state’s economic development arm to lure new businesses, diversify the economy and create jobs. Originally envisioned as a public-private partnership, 90 percent of its budget now comes from taxpayers. The legitimate rap against Enterprise Florida centers on its high-profile incentives fund: millions of public dollars paid to private companies in exchange for creating new jobs.
Visit Florida, the state tourism agency, is another public-private (but mostly public) partnership that markets Florida throughout the country and the world. It received $78 million in taxpayer money this year, and its free spending on promotions such as those featuring the rapper Pitbull, chef Emeril Lagasse and motocross champion Ricky Carmichael resulted in Scott forcing out the agency’s leader. It took a lawsuit by Corcoran, R-Land O’Lakes, to force Pitbull to reveal he collected $1 million. That’s too much money and too little transparency.
Still, both agencies serve a purpose. Enterprise Florida is primarily a marketing organization. Its members attend conferences around the world promoting Florida’s low taxes, business-friendly regulations, accessibility via ports and airports, weather and proximity to South America. It focuses on attracting and growing new industries, and most of the deals it strikes involve no cash incentives. Visit Florida, likewise, should not be seen as dispensable. A state that relies so heavily on tourism as its economic lifeblood should market itself.
Corcoran has warned for months that both agencies’ budgets are on his chopping block, and Scott lashed out at the speaker on Tuesday as being more concerned with his political future than the state’s. Both men have a credibility issue. Scott pushed for reforms only in response to intense scrutiny about the agencies’ spending. Corcoran correctly argues that economic development is aided by investing in education and infrastructure, but the Republican-led Legislature has failed to adequately do that on a consistent basis. Today is the first hearing for the House’s proposal to dissolve Enterprise Florida and Visit Florida. The proposal also eliminates tax breaks for filmmaking, and it would bar using future resort taxes to fund new stadium construction or renovations. This is a scorched-earth approach that would do more harm than good.
There is a strong case for eliminating Enterprise Florida’s high-profile job incentives program, which ties up too much public money waiting on too few jobs to be created. And Visit Florida’s budget could use a sharp knife. But both agencies should survive — and there is justification for reasonable incentives for film companies and contributions toward sports stadiums.
The opening of the legislative session is four weeks away, so these are only the opening bids by the governor and the House speaker. But lines are being drawn, and they need to be careful they do not force each other into positions that are so hardened that they cannot meet in the middle by the session’s end in May.
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