Tourism marketing needs prof pledge

Jack Latvala and Richard Corcoran should give Robert Watson a call.

Latvala is an inflfluential state senator. Corcoran is the speaker of the Florida House of Representatives.

Both appeared at the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches on Monday to debate a contentious business and economic issue — the future of Enterprise Florida and Visit Florida.

Latvala is a proponent for both agencies, one that recruits corporations and the other that recruits tourists. Corcoran is the agencies’ chief critic.

Like Gov. Rick Scott, Latvala insists Florida needs to promote itself to be competitive in luring job- generating businesses and tax-subsidizing tourists.

He noted that funding for both entities is a minuscule part of the state budget. “I think that’s a pretty good investment,” he said. “To eliminate this investment would be disastrous.”

I don’t mean to shortchange Latvala’s position, but I’ve given the pro- side space in previous columns and it’s only fair to give Team Corcoran some semblance of equal time.

Corcoran argued that dollars spent on both agencies is misspent money.

To Corcoran, Enterprise Florida and Visit Florida amount to “pork barrel” spending, and he blasted the $1 million contract to performing artist Pitbull, which led to a house cleaning of the senior managers at Visit Florida.

He even said achievements by Enterprise Florida, such as landing Hertz Rent-a- Car corporate headquarters, weren’t true achievements. He noted Hertz was offffffffffffered $ 40 million more to move to Oklahoma, but chose Florida anyway. Why?

“They didn’t want to be in Oklahoma,” he said. “They wanted to be in Florida.”

Even worse, Corcoran assailed both agencies for stale and yesteryear missions, throwbacks to the days of taxand-spend liberals throwing money at problems because it’s the way things are always done.

“Government just keeps spending and spending,” said Corcoran. “But we’re not spending on the things that matter most to people.”

There’s just one point the two leaders agreed on: This debate is too important to business and Florida’s economy to let it degenerate into false and personal attacks.

Latvala decried a video tying epic failures to Enterprise Florida, though the agency had no role in them. Corcoran lamented lawmakers being attacked as anti-business and anti-tourism, and made a plea for “civility.”

“Words matter,” he said. “Words destroy.”

Enter Robert Watson, a history and politics professor at Lynn University. Watson is proposing civility pledges, where people agree to debate and disagree but in a way that is not caustic or intransigent.

Last week, he brought Boca Raton’s mayor on campus to support the pledge and declare March civility month in the south Palm Beach County city. Watson has spoken with local lawmakers about similar efffffffffffforts in Tallahassee and Washington, D.C.

With the Legislature convening Tuesday, Corcoran and Latvala may want to reach out to Watson about promoting civility in the debate about promoting Florida.