Trim taxpayer support for Visit Florida

New Florida Senate President Joe Negron, sworn in this month for a two-year term, wants to direct more public dollars to higher education and environmental protection. Both are worthy areas for investments that could strengthen Florida’s economy and spare it from higher expenses in the future.

But with state economists projecting little if any surplus revenue available in the next state budget, legislators will need to offset every spending increase with a spending cut somewhere else. Tax hikes are a nonstarter with the Legislature’s Republican leaders and Gov. Rick Scott, and Florida — thank goodness — can’t fill budget gaps by borrowing.

Enter new House Speaker Richard Corcoran, who says Florida has a “spending problem.” That’s a sweeping indictment that certainly doesn’t apply to every part of the budget. But at least one of the big targets on the speaker’s hit list, Visit Florida, could stand a haircut.

The annual taxpayer tab for Visit Florida, the state’s public-private tourism marketing agency, has shot up by 169 percent since 2009, from $29 million to $78 million. The agency and its boosters, including Scott, are quick to point out that the number of tourists visiting Florida during that period also has risen. But the increase, from 82 million to 106 million a year, amounts to 29 percent. And that growth occurred as the U.S. economy recovered from the Great Recession and fuel prices fell, reducing the cost of travel to Florida.

Visit Florida also receives private contributions, mainly in the form of travel packages and advertising space, from major players in the state’s tourism industry that benefit from the agency’s marketing. Last year, those contributions were valued at $144 million.

Considering these and other variables — foreign currency values, anyone? — the notion that there is a direct relationship between public funding for Visit Florida and the state’s overall tourist tally is a stretch.

Visit Florida has further weakened its case for such lavish taxpayer support by operating as if it’s a private organization. Last year, the Orlando Sentinel first reported that the agency was keeping secret many of its promotional contracts, including a notorious one with the rapper Pitbull. The reports prompted Scott to order a state audit of the agency. Released in June, the audit called for greater transparency at Visit Florida, as well as more stringent rules for pay and travel for its executives.

Following the audit, Visit Florida released most of the details of a renewed deal with an English soccer club that it had hidden the year before. But even if the agency continues its steps toward more public disclosure, there are other agencies or initiatives also promoting tourism with public dollars.

Visit Orlando, another public-private organization, was allocated $52 million for 2016 from Orange County’s tourist development tax. Brand USA, a national marketing campaign to attract tourists from abroad, will receive almost $93 million in the next federal budget year from a fee paid by international travelers to the United States. These overlapping efforts are another good reason for lawmakers to consider cuts in Visit Florida’s public funding, and to be skeptical of agency boosters who give it all the credit for the state’s higher tourism numbers.

While Corcoran, a Republican from Land O’ Lakes, and other small-government ideologues might argue for eliminating all of Visit Florida’s public funding, legislators could instead trim the agency’s taxpayer support to 2009 levels and make almost $50 million available to redirect to other more productive investments. That amount of savings alone would finance half the state’s annual payments on a new reservoir to reduce pollution from Lake Okeechobee that Negron, a Stuart Republican, has proposed. Or they would cover about half the annual cost of expanding Bright Futures scholarships to cover all tuition and fees for the state’s top students, another goal of the Senate president’s.

Legislators will need to go beyond cuts at Visit Florida to find all the funds they need to invest in new priorities and balance the budget. But it’s a good place to start.