Politicians unlikely to end subsidies for Visit Florida

Theoretically, Visit Florida’s taxpayer-funded gravy train runs out Oct. 1.

After receiving hundreds of millions of public dollars, the state’s tourism-promotion agency now needs legislators to reauthorize its existence.

Fortunately for Visit Florida, that’s precisely what everyone expects them to do.

Why do we expect that? Because tourism bosses like having you subsidize their advertising budgets. And what tourism bosses want from Florida politicians, they usually get.

Still, House Speaker Jose Oliva turned heads this past week when he suggested taxpayers may have doled out enough.

“Oliva opposes reauthorizing Visit Florida,” read the headline from Politico.

The news was shocking. But you know what else I think it was?

Rubbish. Just grandstanding claptrap.

In fact, I’ll offer this:

If the Legislature actually defunds Visit Florida, I will deepfry this column and eat every word.

Now, I reserve the right to add Frank’s Red Hot wing sauce to make the Kentucky-fried column little more palatable.

But I might as well reserve the right to watch monkeys fly out of my hiney.

Neither will happen. How do I know? Because we’ve seen this ruse before.

Two years ago — after Visit Florida generated another spate of embarrassing headlines, involving a secretive, $1 million contract with South Florida rapper Pitbull — former House Speaker Richard Corcoran also vowed to cut off Visit Florida.

Corcoran claimed he was a free-market man and declared the subsidies “corporate welfare.”

The speaker and I actually had a brief bromance over this topic.

I was impressed that he — unlike most of Florida’s self-described “free market” types — was willing to actually prove his principles

and tell Florida’s most powerful industry: If you want to advertise, great! Just use your own money.

I had stars in my eyes … right up until the moment Corcoran caved and agreed to give Visit Florida another $76 million. Just like every politician before him.

Now, Corcoran did prompt some muchneeded transparency at the agency. But that just means we can see the “corporate welfare” he described more clearly.

Maybe Oliva will be different. Maybe his tough talk will prove to be more than just shtick or a negotiating tactic. But I’ve had my anti-subsidy heart broken one too many times to buy it.

Frankly, I’m skeptical of asking taxpayers to subsidize any for-profit industries. But if we must, let’s pick high-wage ones in our low-wage state. We need more code-makers, not ticket-takers.

In the past, Visit Florida has argued that without taxpayer dollars, Florida’s tourism industry would collapse.

Nonsense. Without taxpayer dollars, the tourism industry would simply have to pay for its own advertising — just like every other business in America.

Florida’s tourism companies already advertise aplenty. And it works. People don’t flock here because Visit Florida runs a “Must be the Sunshine” campaign. They come because Universal opens up another Harry Potter land. Because Disney opens Pandora. Because Carnival, Celebrity and Royal Caribbean debut more floating cities.

Those companies advertise all those things all by themselves for a simple reason: It’s good for their businesses. And bully for them. As long as they continue to innovate, market and offer value and the

economy remains strong, the crowds will keep coming.

At this point in the debate — whenever Visit Florida funding is threatened — the big tourism guys often trot out the little tourism guys and say: Visit Florida funding isn’t just for us! It’s also about small attractions and culture? Don’t you like small attractions and culture?

Well sure. But it’s not small attractions I see advertised in the Visit Florida clips that feature Mickey Mouse, Minions and killer whales.

And sure, I love culture. But I’d rather see the state restore direct funding to nonprofit arts and cultural amenities — which legislators slashed 90 percent from $25 million to $2.6 million last year alone — than hope those groups see some residual benefits from Pitbull’s “Sexy Beaches” video.

And again, if Florida’s tourism interests see value

in joint advertising, there’s nothing to stop them from pooling their own resources to make it happen.

In fact, Oliva could ask them to do just that — put more of their own skin in the game and fund at least half of Visit Florida’s cash budget themselves. (Not through donations of “promotional value,” mind you. Cold, hard cash.)

He still wouldn’t be making good on his defunding talk. But at least it would be a step toward helping the industry wean itself off welfare — you know, giving the industry “a hand up instead of a handout” and all that stuff.

But I doubt we’ll even get that far. Usually, we just see politicians offer big bluster followed by complete caves. It’s what tourism counts on … and why I’ll probably save the hot sauce for my chicken wings.