Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran plans to use the House’s oversight powers to see how tourist and economic development councils around the state are spending tax dollars
“We’re not done looking and using our oversight powers to reign in this insider behavior,” he said yesterday on News Talk 1370’s “Pensacola Speaks.”
Corcoran and the Florida House last week challenged Visit Florida to release details about its contract with rapper Pitbull.
“We, as conservatives, begin to ask why are we paying up to 80 million dollars of hard-earned taxpayer money to go to this entity called Visit Florida to pay for the advertising of basically Fortune 500 companies,” said Corcoran. “So we went and said, ‘We want to know what you’re spending money on.’ They told us they couldn’t give it to us because they were protected under trade secrets.”
The Florida House filed a lawsuit to force Visit Florida to release details of its spending.
“And lo and behold, Pitbull, who was one of the people who got these private trade secret contracts that wouldn’t be released, he went online himself and said, ‘Here’s the contract. I don’t want to have anything to do with this.’ Then shortly thereafter, the governor fired all the people at Visit Florida for not having openness and transparency.”
What did the House find in Visit Florida’s expenditures?
“One million dollars went to pay Pitbull to do this video that if you get a chance to watch it, the lyrics are over the top, degrading, and horrible. They certainly don’t represent the family-friendly state of Florida. Then we also found out they did 2.3 million dollars to wrap a race car. They did another one point something million dollars to sponsor a B-league soccer team in England. This is all with taxpayer money.”
Speaker Corcoran now wants the House to review how tourist and economic development dollars are being spent on the county level.
“We’re about to send out letters to every single economic development council, every single tourist development council,” said Corcoran. “We’re going to use that oversight power and say, ‘Release it to us, and if you don’t release it to us, then they’ll find themselves in court with us, too.'”