Visit Orlando's secrecy, conflicts may prompt subpoena, by Scott Maxwell (Orlando Sentinel)

Our local tourist promotion agencies overspend. Better that bed tax money be used to benefit all, not ad agencies.



Visit Orlando's secrecy, conflicts may prompt subpoena

Visit Orlando is using millions of tax dollars to sponsor tennis's U.S. Open — but won't reveal details.
Scott Maxwell
Taking Names

Privacy Policy

For years, I’ve written columns about how Visit Orlando hides the way it spends public money.

It’s secretive. It lacks accountability. It’s wrong.

And now — with news of yet another secretive agreement surfacing — House Speaker Richard Corcoran says he will make sure it stops.

“It would appear Visit Orlando needs to find out the hard way that there’s no such thing as hidden spending agreements with taxpayers’ money,” he said. “Visit Orlando can turn over the information needed to the House or we can subpoena it. Those are their only two choices.”

Yes, a subpoena.

From the speaker of the Florida House.

How ridiculous that it would ever get this far. That Visit Orlando wouldn’t do what’s right on its own. And that local officials, mainly Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs and the county commission, wouldn’t require them to do so.

It looks like this agency — which gets $50 million a year in hotel taxes — has something to hide.

Last week, I started asking questions about another secret — the amount of money Visit Orlando has paid local TV station Fox 35, whose general manager serves on Visit Orlando’s board of directors, for naming rights … to a weather camera.

What does that mean? It means that when a WOFL meteorologist gives a weather report, he says: “This is the view from our Visit Orlando tower cam ...”

Obviously, the majority of the people who hear such a thing on an Orlando TV station don’t need to be encouraged to “Visit Orlando.” They’re already here.

So how much of your money did Visit Orlando spend naming this camera?

Well, Visit Orlando won’t say. Neither will Fox 35, which happens to be the Orlando Sentinel’s TV partner.

In reporting and researching this piece, I was told the deal was worth somewhere around $150,000 during the first year. But who knows? It could’ve been 15 cents. Or $1.5 million. When the people spending your tax dollars refuse to tell you how they’re spending them, we’re left to guess.

Nor did the agency directly answer my question about whether it had struck business deals with any other board members’ companies. Instead Visit Orlando said in a statement: “When we do occasionally conduct business with any of these companies, we follow all IRS regulations for reporting.”

A spokeswoman for Fox said that Fox 35 General Manager Allyson Meyers “neither voted on this partnership, nor requested that the organization consider such a partnership, nor did she ‘discuss’ the advertising.”

Visit Orlando execs said Fox gave them more than just naming rights to a camera, including a “digital presence” that extended to South Florida. But they didn’t say specifically what that meant — or what else taxpayers got from this deal.

Now, compare that to Visit Orlando’s counterpart at the state level, Visit Florida — which now discloses most everything.

When Visit Florida spends money with a TV or radio station, there’s no guessing. Just click on the “public records” section of VisitFlorida.org. There, you can see, for instance, a contract with a classic-rock radio station in Atlanta that gave the agency more than 900 on-air plugs in exchange for $10,000 and five all-expense-paid trips to Florida that the station could give away in a contest.

All the details are there. The public gets to see precisely how its money was spent. Corcoran and the Legislature demanded it.

In Orange County, Mayor Jacobs and the county commission allow secrets galore.

They do force Visit Orlando to reveal all of its check payments. But not details about what the money bought. And Visit Orlando can keep payments hidden by simply cutting checks to primary contractors — as much as $10 million to a single marketing firm in Milwaukee — and then having that contractor cut checks to someone else.

That’s why check registers don’t contain any evidence of many of the deals the agency strikes, like the one with Fox.

Jacobs and county commissioners seem fine with this. While Jacobs declared herself “the most transparent elected official in Orange County, probably ever” at a meeting of the county’s Tourist Development Council on Friday, she also said she understands the value of secrecy when it comes to competition.

House Speaker Corcoran, however, is much less sympathetic.

“If you take one penny of taxpayer money you will be open, transparent, and accountable to a fault,” he said. “If you don't like that, then don’t take taxpayer money."

That’s the argument I’ve made for more than a decade. Secrecy and tax dollars are a bad combination.

Visit Orlando should reveal every dollar it spends — from CEO George Aguel’s $607,000-a-year salary (a disclosure Corcoran previously forced) to every dollar spent on consultants, travel and advertising. The Orlando Sentinel receives marketing and sponsorship dollars from Visit Orlando.

Corcoran says he will get that information — even if he has to summon Visit Orlando execs before legislative committees next session.

Again, it’s pretty pathetic that it would come to that. But at least there’s a public official pushing for total transparency … even if we had to look to Tallahassee to find him.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com