Kudos to Scott Maxwell for taking on Orange County Major Jerry Demings over plans to yet again squander a small fortune of local tax dollars on boondoggle tourism projects.
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Maybe now he’ll listen.
Maxwell: Here we go again. Orange County looks to ensure hotel taxes can’t pay for local needs.
As the Sentinel has reported, Demings has announced a task force to direct how funds from a 6% sales tax on hotel rooms — the Tourist Development Tax or TDT — should be spent. This is his second task force. I participated in the first one three years ago. It was a carefully selected group of people reaching a preordained conclusion. And that was to spend $560 million pouring concrete at the Orange County Convention Center.
It was a scam but not a big surprise. The previous year Demings had pushed for a sales-tax referendum to fund transportation projects. A big chunk of that was going to the Lynx bus service. More than half of the Lynx routes serve the tourism corridor.
But Demings did not ask the tourism overlords to contribute to the cause, not so much as a dime from the TDT. Instead he asked voters to foot the entire bill by slapping another penny on the sales tax. They rejected it overwhelmingly.
You might think Demings would have revisited the TDT for Lynx funding if it was such a priority. He did not. And so this year we paid $157.5 million to Lynx, subsidizing labor transportation costs for the tourism industry.
Demings has laid the same ground rules for his second TDT task force as he did the original, meaning nothing will change. The co-chair is the namesake of the Linda Chapin Theater at the Orange County Convention Center. I don’t see the former county mayor rocking the boat. And this boat needs to be capsized.
Winter Park Mayor Sheila DeCiccio gets that. In a letter to Demings, she requested that “the Task Force makeup be weighted more to the entities that represent the people of Orange County and the entities that must provide the needed infrastructure.”
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She added, “This Task Force has the opportunity to make structural changes to the TDT allocations criteria that can address some of Orange County’s most pressing needs. With property tax reform on the November ballot, this Task Force is more important than ever.”
DeCiccio also brings up the obvious — a statewide November referendum on property taxes that would gut local government budgets if it passes. Orange County says it would lose $270 million a year.
Demings has warned, “Services will be cut, there’s no way around it. Between now and November, what local governments all across the State of Florida will be communicating with their residents is very specific reductions, and how it will impact their daily lives.”
The TDT brings in $400 million a year.
So do we tell voters that Orange County will be too broke to serve residents, but at the same time Orange County is so flush with cash it has to stage an emergency give-a-way to a tourism industry that just set a record with more than 76 million visitors last year?
Demings uses the go-to excuse that state legislation bans using the TDT on local projects. I recall the full-court press from local officials when they went to Tallahassee time and again in a relentless push to get SunRail. Where is that effort here? Other counties have done it.
Where are the leaders when we need them?
I imagine the folks over on I-Drive are gearing up for another great heist. Before doing so, I’d suggest they consider whether continuing to treat Orange County as a host organism is a good long-term strategy, or whether it’s time to transition from parasite to partner.
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Mike Thomas is a former Sentinel reporter and columnist.