The Florida House is splitting a bill to cut Gov. Rick Scott’s beloved Enterprise Florida and Visit Florida in one of the first steps for a possible compromise before the 2017 legislative session even begins.
Instead of having House members vote on one bill to ax the state’s economic incentive agency and the tourism agency, the chamber will vote separately on different proposals to make cuts to each agency.
Rep. Jose Felix Diaz, R-Miami, filed the bill, HB 7005, Monday.
“Dividing the issues into separate bills allows for more engaged and meaningful debate while putting Visit Florida on a path to real reform,” Rep. Jose Felix Diaz, R-Miami, wrote to House members.
Diaz said members had requested the bill be split into two so they could vote on each agency individually.
Diaz said the bill would contain “accountability and oversight provisions” for Visit Florida. Last week, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, introduced an amendment requiring the agency to publicly post large contracts and freeze salaries and benefits for Visit Florida employees among other stipulations.
The House’s original proposal would have eliminated both Enterprise Florida and Visit Florida and caused a wave of contention between House members and Gov. Scott, who has championed both agencies as boons to the state economy and to Florida families.
The legislation as it currently stands has already been approved by House committees and would face a full floor debate and vote when the legislative session begins March 7.
At the forefront of the battle over Enterprise Florida and Visit Florida is House Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’Lakes, who has slammed the agencies for being wasteful with taxpayer money.
The pushback from Corcoran comes, he says, from a desire to promote more transparency in Florida government and to eliminate useless spending on agencies which are not succeeding or contributing much in the Sunshine State.
“All of of that money that goes to those things that are gratuitous waste of money, is money that could go to education, that could go to infrastructure, or creating a fair and equitable tax structure,” Corcoran said at a forum in West Palm Beach Monday.
Scott and Corcoran vehemently disagree over whether Enterprise Florida and Visit Florida are beneficial to the state and have since been embroiled in a highly public battle over the agencies.
The governor has accused House members of disregarding Florida businesses and families who could benefit from policies and programs promoted by Enterprise Florida and Visit Florida.
“They don’t care about people’s jobs,” Scott said earlier this month. “These are individuals who haven’t experienced what I went through as a child; have never been in business; don’t know the difficulty of building a business; must not think about the importance of business or jobs; are not thinking about their constituents … They are individuals who have never been in business and they want to lecture me.”
Scott currently wants $76 million for Visit Florida and $85 million for Enterprise Florida.
Corcoran has since announced a proposal to keep the state’s tourism agency, but the proposal would strip Visit Florida’s budget down to a slim $25 million.
The legislative session begins next Tuesday.
Reach reporter Allison Nielsen by email at allison@sunshinestatenews.com or follow her on Twitter: @AllisonNielsen.
