$12M in your tax money for Emeril.

I like Emeril Lagasse. The celebrity chef is gregarious, energetic and has a contagious passion for food.

So when my wife and I had a disappointing meal at one of his New Orleans eateries a few years ago, I figured: No big deal. Maybe they were having an off night. We’ve blown money in worse ways.

But here’s the thing: That was

our call. We made the decision to spend that money on Emeril.

You, the Florida taxpayer, on the other hand, didn’t get any input when officials at Visit Florida decided to spend more than $12 million to get Lagasse to film a TV show in Florida.

Yes, $12 million … $12.7 million, to be precise.

BAM! That’s an awful lot of gumbo.

Details were revealed last week when Politico reported that Lagasse made $4 million off the five-year deal — and his producer personally pocketed $1.25 million — to finance “Emeril’s Florida,” a show on the Cooking Channel that featured Florida cuisine.

Now, if you never saw “Emeril’s Florida” before it ended its run last year, you’re not alone.

The program you helped finance aired on a network you probably never watched. The Cooking Channel was the 96th most-watched cable network last year … behind such networks as Laff, Pop and Reelzchannel. (The Food Network, by comparison, ranked 26th with more than seven times as many viewers.)

Still, “Emeril’s Florida” was a splendid showcase of Florida’s restaurant scene, including a couple of episodes where Emeril featured restaurants like … well … Emeril’s.

That’s right, you helped pay for Emeril to promote his own restaurants. That’s quite a deal.

But let’s just say that every bit of that $12.7 million was money well spent. After all, the show was a quite an infomercial for the Sunshine State.

The public still deserves to see how every nickel was spent. And that’s the biggest problem here: Details were kept secret.

Getting the full story required Florida newspapers and legislative subpoenas. First, the Naples Daily News unearthed payment details. Then legislators started asking questions, which the show producer didn’t want to answer, prompting House Speaker Richard Corcoran to take legal action.

That’s an awful lot of trouble for the public simply to learn how its money is being spent.

And taxpayers spend a lot of money promoting tourism in this state. Visit Florida received $76 million in public money last year. Visit Orlando collected another $50 million in hotel taxes. Local tourism-promotion agencies all over the state collected lesser amounts.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a private industry more addicted to public subsidies. Florida’s tourism industry has been up and running for decades — and its leaders insist

it still can’t function on its own free-market feet.

So if state and local leaders are going to keep this welfare program running, they should at least be completely transparent about how all the money’s spent. (And maybe consider drugtesting and means-testing to boot.)

Visit Florida has come a long way. It now discloses contracts for everyone to see. But local agencies, such as Visit Orlando, haven’t been as transparent.

Visit Orlando, for example, has struck secretive multi-milliondollar deals that don’t allow taxpayers to see if they are getting value for their money and smaller deals with companies run by its board members. (The agency has also spent money with the Orlando Sentinel on marketing and sponsorships.)

That’s why Corcoran and the Florida Legislature have proposed tougher rules for transparency and accountability. They’re long overdue.

House Bill 3 would force board members at tourism (and economic development) agencies to disclose conflicts of interest, as well as details about all contracts worth more than $5,000.

Those are both solid ideas, which may be why the bill received strong bipartisan support in an 87-20 House vote last week.

Several local reps opposed the transparency plan — including Democrats Bruce Antone, Kamia Brown and Amy Mercado and Republican Rene Plasencia.

Mercado said she thought the bill went too far, requiring contract disclosures before contracts were executed and travel-spending limits (such as $150 a night for hotels) that she found too restrictive.

This proposal may err on the side of cumbersome. But for too long, the rules have allowed way too many secrets — which are a fine thing in recipes, but not when public money is involved.