In recent weeks, Central Florida has been atwitter with celebratory news that local arts groups were getting a whopping $5.5 million worth of hotel taxes.
That may sounds like a lot of money, but it’s less than 2% of the annual take.
While the arts groups were grateful for the $5,5 million, more than $300 million went to the money-losing convention center and Visit Orlando. Heck, the county spent more than $22 million this year — four times the amount the arts groups were celebrating — just to cover the operations at the deficit-running convention center.
So whenever you see people pointing to a few million dollars for local groups as if it’s some kind of grand gesture, it’s like the organizers of the Hunger Games expecting praise for offering the starving residents of District 12 a few table scraps.
And here’s the important news: This lopsided funding model — beaucoup bucks for tourism and crumbs for locals — will continue for at least another year. Because Florida legislators killed a bill that would’ve allowed hotel taxes to be spent on things this community truly needs.
And they killed it behind closed doors, because they didn’t want you to see which lawmakers did the bidding of tourism lobbyists.
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The backstory is that State Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando, filed a couple of bills this session that were widely popular with Central Floridians — regular people who don’t get campaign checks and free hotel rooms from theme parks.
The bills would’ve allowed Orange County to spend a small portion of the 6% tax on hotel rooms on things this community direly needs, like roads, buses and rail.
Right now, Orange County collects about $360 million a year in hotel taxes and spends none of it on transportation, even though tourists put serious strains on our roads.
Other tourist towns do things differently. Las Vegas uses hotel taxes to pay for roads, parks, schools and rail. Other counties in Florida spend hotel taxes on things like affordable housing. But at the tourism lobby’s urging, state lawmakers have prohibited Orange County from doing the same.
As a result, Orange County spends the bulk of its money repeatedly expanding the convention center — which is already larger than the Pentagon at 7 million square feet — and giving it to Visit Orlando, which gets about $100 million a year. Lesser amounts have been spent on local venues like the Kia Center, Camping World Stadium and the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. And finally, the smallest fraction — less than 5% or $17 million — goes to local arts and cultural groups, including the grants mentioned above.
Over the years, it has added up to billions for tourism and scraps for locals.
Tourism interests say that’s the way it should be, that Visit Orlando needs that much money to promote the region. (As if visitors wouldn’t otherwise know about hidden gems like the Magic Kingdom.) Most other private businesses and industries, of course, pay for their own marketing and advertising needs.
Tourism boosters stress that Visit Orlando also promotes smaller attractions and even locally owned restaurants. And that’s true. But those marketing efforts pale in comparison to promotion of the big theme parks. Sometimes Visit Orlando even pays the parent or affiliated companies of Disney and Universal to promote Disney and Universal. (Like when Visit Orlando spent $600,000 to run ads promoting Disney and other theme parks on Disney+.)
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One of Smith’s bills would’ve required tourism interests to contribute at least one private dollar to Visit Orlando for every tax dollar the agency receives. That idea is way overdue but died quickly. Most politicians who take campaign donations from tourism interests aren’t about to ask those interests to dig into their own pockets.
Smith also filed bills that would’ve allowed Orange County to spend hotel taxes on transportation — like the proposed SunRail extension that would run from the airport to the tourist corridor and for the Lynx buses that serve tourism.
And let’s be clear: If hotel taxes don’t pay for those things, you — the local taxpayer — will.
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Smith said Senate Republicans liked his idea of using hotel taxes to on local needs to lower the tax burden on local residents. But in the final hours of budget negotiations, that provision was killed.
So who’s to blame? Republican legislative leaders. I’d love to be more specific. You deserve to know precisely who’s mucking around with your money. But GOP leaders did their budget negotiations behind closed doors and were careful to never actually take a roll-call vote on Smith’s bills, so that you won’t know where they stand.
But GOP lawmakers control everything about the budget process — the same lawmakers who are given free theme park tickets and rooms by Universal in a fundraising extravaganza most years. Disney also showers lawmakers from both parties with cash and goodies.
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So the deal died behind closed doors, and no individual has their name attached to it.
Senate President Ben Albritton and House Speaker Danny Perez are the ones ultimately responsible for killing this plan to let Orange County spend hotel taxes on local needs.
Smith is hopeful he can try again next year. In the meantime, though, get ready for Orange County leaders to talk about raising your taxes again — in part because they can’t use this giant pot of money on things this community actually needs.
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