The private-public partnership in charge of Florida’s economic development has come under fire. Much of the criticism is coming from an unlikely coalition.
Enterprise Florida was a brainchild of the late Governor Lawton Chiles. When it was created twenty years ago, it promised to create two-hundred thousand jobs by the year 2005. Dan Krassner who heads the government watchdog group Integrity Florida said that didn’t happen.
“So after 1600 transactions and pulling taxpayer resources away from other projects and other needs for the state, tying up to one-point-seven billion dollars over the years, we’ve only seen 103,544 jobs created since 1992,” Krassner noted.
Integrity Florida was commissioned by the free-market supporting Americans for Prosperity to produce a study highly critical of Enterprise Florida. Slade O’Brian is the director of Americans for Prosperity Florida.
“We’ve been at this with Enterprise Florida for almost 25-years now. This report basically shows that they haven’t lived up to the mission they were tasked to do,” O’Brian said.
With minutes of the Krassner-O’Brian media event, Governor Rick Scott’s office released a statement defending Enterprise Florida and calling the negative report into question.
