County stands up to tourism industry

Commissioners clamp down on tax district that steered millions to Universal Orlando

Maxwell: Commissioners clamp down on tax district that steered millions to Universal Orlando.

Orlando has grown up a lot in the past few decades.

But in many ways, this community is still a small town —a company town where tourism bosses still call the shots.

This past week, though, Orange County took a big step toward growing up.

It happened inside the County Commission chambers where — for the first time I can recall in more than two decades of covering this community — a majority of elected officials stood up to this town’s tourism interests and said: Enough. We’re tired of using so many tax dollars to pad your profit margins. We have other needs . It was a big darn deal.

The issue involves a special taxing district around International Drive. And I know, your eyes probably started glazing over as soon as you saw the phrase “special taxing district.” I practically dozed off typing it.

But you need to understand: This is how the system is rigged. This stuff is complex and boring by design. The people who game the system don’t want you to pay attention.

In this case, the taxing district has allowed the tourism industry to hoard tax payments for its own interests. In one egregious example, Orange County voted to give Universal Orlando up to $100 million to build a road

it needs for a new theme park. The county is actually giving the money to the park.

Most of us pay our taxes, and then the county can spend those tax dollars on services everyone needs — everything from sheriff ’s deputies to code enforcement.

But in these special districts, the county doesn’t share all the tax money with everyone. Some of it is siphoned away from the county’s general bank account and kept in a special fund that can only be spent on projects that benefit that specific neighborhood. Maybe a beautification project. Or a theme park road.

You have to share all your taxes. They get to keep big chunks of their taxes for themselves. It’s a scam.

If you’re having trouble envisioning how much of a scam it is, imagine paying your next batch of property taxes and attaching a note that says:

Hi Mayor. My tax payment is enclosed, but I forbid you from spending it the way you want. A big chunk of it must be spent on things that benefit me personally.

Yes, I know you still need to pay for mosquito control and running the medical examiner’s office. But I’ve decided other taxpayers should pay full freight for that stuff. I just want a new flower bed in the median near my house.

So I’m demanding that each and every year, you siphon off a larger chunk of my tax payments and spend it only on things I want in my neighborhood.

Hugs and Kisses, Joan Q. Taxpayer.

That sounds ridiculous, right? County officials would never agree. Yet when tourism bosses — who fund campaigns and make endorsements — ask for money, the politicians respond: How much?

Over the past 20 years, International Drive taxpayers have kept $160 million for themselves, allegedly to address “blighted” communities. Yet the working-class neighborhood in the district, Tangelo Park, received scraps while commissioners steered money closer to parks with multimillion-dollar rides and four-star hotels. Blighted indeed.

A few of us have long thought that system was … what’s the scholarly phrase I’m looking for … freakin’ nuts.

But local politicians long defended it all. Until this past week.

Five of seven commissioners voted to end the special I-Drive district in a few years. And all seven voted to spend district money on more things this community truly needs — like public transportation, job training and workforce housing.

The votes were the right thing to do — and yet unthinkable in years past.

Here’s who made things change: You, the voter.

You started replacing establishment-supporting politicians with fresh faces who challenged the status quo. It started with the elections of Emily Bonilla, Mayra Uribe and Maribel Cordero.

But county voters truly tipped the scales of power last year when they ousted theme-park darling Betsy VanderLey and brought in a fourth fresh face, savvy and fearless attorney Nicole Wilson. Wilson didn’t rely on theme park money to get elected. Nor does she think taxpayers need to pad park profits.

While generations of commissioners nodded like bobbleheads when tourism bosses ordered them to expand the convention center over and over again, Wilson asked: Don’t we have more pressing needs? (We do.)

Wilson asked similar questions about the I-Drive taxing district — and found allies in Bonilla, Uribe and Cordero. Mayor Jerry Demings may not have run for office with the same rabble-rousing desires, but he’s savvy enough to count votes and read Orange County’s increasingly progressive tea leaves. Demings knows he represents a community full of low-wage workers tired of seeing politicians give away their tax dollars.

Many of those workers paraded through the commission chambers last week, calling themselves “the little people” and stressing that they weren’t looking for handouts, just better-paying jobs, job training and ways to get to and from their jobs without riding a bus for four hours a day.

Orange County has a woefully underfunded bus system. Hotel housekeepers who can’t afford to live near the resorts they clean have to spend up to two hours each way on Lynx buses that make multiple connections.

Yet county officials have traditionally shrugged their shoulders, claiming they couldn’t find the money for bus routes while steering $100 million to Universal to literally pave the way for another theme park.

Tuesday’s votes changed that. All seven commissioners voted to loosen restrictions on district spending to help fund services everyone needs.

And in a separate vote, Demings joined with Wilson, Bonilla, Uribe and Cordero to end this parochial tax district altogether in 2028. (Christine Moore and Victoria Siplin disagreed.)

The vote was unprecedented. It was local leaders finally agreeing with what citizens have long said — that nobody’s trying to undermine tourism, but that taxpayers shouldn’t keep subsidizing it.

And you, the voters, made it happen.