A job, if you can keep it

There are few elected or appointed officials in state government who owe their position to Miami rapper Pitbull. Ken Lawson, a Tallahassee insider who was installed as the new head of Visit Florida this week, is one of them.

Lawson was tapped for the position by the Visit Florida board after the previous president and CEO, Will Seccombe, was ousted in the aftermath of a controversial, although expired, tourism-marketing contract with Pitbull. The board also agreed to pay $73,000 to the departing Seccombe.

Lawson, who was the secretary of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation before the appointment, will make $175,000 to lead his new agency.

The first task, according to Lawson, will be meeting Gov. Rick Scott’s recommendations to make the agency more transparent. But even he understood there was another looming objective on the horizon.

“Also I’m going to make sure the Legislature understands the value of Visit Florida, and that we understand their role in overseeing us, so there are no questions in the future,” Lawson said after Tuesday’s board meeting.

Easier said than done. Some lawmakers are resisting Scott’s expected budget request of $76 million for the spending year that begins July 1. Even before reports about the $1 million contract with Pitbull, whose real name is Armando Christian Perez, House Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’ Lakes, was spearheading a push against state spending to boost industries.

Scott got support from the Florida Chamber of Commerce in another part of the incentives battle this week, when the organization threw its weight behind the governor’s bid to set aside $85 million for incentives through Enterprise Florida.

During a news conference Thursday to release legislative priorities for the upcoming session, Florida Chamber President and CEO Mark Wilson said more than 90 percent of jobs are created in Florida without the use of incentives but that limited use of such money is needed to compete for “high-wage, high-skill jobs.”

Those pushing against incentives also found a new foothold: settlement money from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. The head of the new House Select Committee on Triumph Gulf Coast said the panel will look to spend the money on things other than directly attracting tourism or business.

“We are not going to be focused on direct economic incentives. That’s not what we think is the best use of the dollars,” Chairman Jay Trumbull, RPanama City, said after the committee’s first meeting Thursday. “But we do believe that there are many opportunities to spend the money in ways that don’t have to be direct incentives.”