Visit Florida is a well-funded powerhouse of tourism for the state of Florida, and given how much of a destination spot Florida has consistently been for years, no one would expect anything to threaten financial stability of an agency capitalizing
Rep. Paul Renner (R-Palm Coast) explains why he and other lawmakers take issue with the way Visit Florida operates, especially in light of recent events in which a lack of transparency on the part of Visit Florida compelled the Speaker of the Florida House Richard Corcoran to sue Pitbull:
“We want to get at a contract—and the Pitbull contract has been the one in the news, so I’ll use that as an example—that the initial response was, ‘We’re not gonna share that information with you because it’s subject to a public records exemption.’ This bill eliminates that public records exemption.”
Several deals with Visit Florida drew the scrutiny of lawmakers to look into how taxpayer money was being spent, and it seemed to make representatives feel that Visit Florida was being rather cavalier with taxpayer dollars. For example, Fulham Football Club disclosed a deal with Visit Florida wherein $1.25 million were spent to imbue their kits with the words “Visit Florida.” The International Motor Sports Association also revealed a $2.9 million deal to put the same words on racecars.
