By Tom Flanigan
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wfsu/local-wfsu-958958.mp3
Tallahassee, FL – While Florida lawmakers are locked in debate over hundreds of bills, Governor Rick Scott also has a busy schedule. Tom Flanigan reports he spent much of Tuesday bringing his message of "more jobs" to private and public audiences.
A traditional feature of each legislative session is "Florida Tourism Day". That's when hundreds of people involved in the state's biggest industry come to Tallahassee. The idea is to keep reminding lawmakers just how important that industry is. But Governor Scott says he needs no convincing. He eagerly stopped by the Tallahassee hotel where the tourism people were gathered to press the flesh.
He also took the podium to tell the tourism crowd he's behind them all the way.
"As you for sure know, tourism is our number-one industry. Our state has a lot of jobs tied to tourism and so I'm clearly going to be the jobs governor. My whole campaign was how to get the state back to work and so we're going to try to make sure this is, for a lot of industries, absolutely the best place to do business but we know for sure that if we do the right things for tourism, we're going to create a lot of jobs."
At the moment, there are about a million Florida jobs directly tied to tourism. Recently, the governor himself joined that number. He became part of a tourism trade mission to a number of Florida's most critical tourist origin markets.
"We delivered Apalachicola oysters to restaurants in Chicago. We gave away - fortunately I was not responsible for paying for these - we gave away a lot of trips so that everybody who sponsored a trip - and I know Disney did a lot of trips - we had a whole plane full on this 737 coming back to Orlando. And we had Florida wine, and these people were excited. I would have been, too; and they got free air fare, they got free hotel and they got trips to Disney World, right?"
It does seem Florida tourism is on the mend. After two years of decline, the number of people choosing Florida as a vacation destination last year was estimated by Visit Florida to be just over eighty-two and a half million. That was a two-percent increase over 2009. The tourism industry says a growing number of those people are coming to Florida for more than the beaches and theme parks and Governor Scott agrees.
"We've got a lot of history in our state, a lot of culture in our state. We've got to constantly think about how to sell it better. 2013 is going to be a significant opportunity."
2013 is when Florida celebrates its five-hundredth birthday. The state's tourism industry is hoping to get some help from state government to make the party even more festive; and attractive to visitors. Maybe a few bucks for more historic preservation, for instance.
"I'm responsible for getting return for all the dollars it's your tax dollars that we're spending. It's not like it's not my money, it's your money. So if there's a return for historic preservation, I'll clearly look at it."
Scott kept up the drumbeat on his "government will pay for it if there's a good return on investment" philosophy at his next two stops. He paid brief visits to a couple of state government agencies, the Florida Department of Health and Florida Department of Elder Affairs.
"But the biggest thing to do is to fund the most effective programs and fund those for the programs that are not as effective we can't fund everything."
This has to be done, Scott says, if Florida is to produce homegrown jobs in the private sector. He cites his visit to Panama last week as an example of Florida missing out on opportunities because big U-S firms like Caterpillar and Dell now have large operations there.
"And those jobs were going to be in Miami. But because of how difficult it is to get visas now in this country, so it was hard for their customers to get into this country to see their products, so now they're moving it down to Panama."
Which is why Scott says he spends so much time on the phone trying to lure out-of-state businesses to come to Florida, despite whatever negatives there may be.
"And we talk to people here and in other places around the world. Now it's nice that Illinois and Connecticut, they're raising their taxes. So I'm very thankful, so I call companies there every day and I say, Let me turn down my air conditioning first so you can hear me.' And I say, What's the weather there? Oh, it's five degrees below? That must be hard.'"
But despite his commitment to shrink state government as part of his business attraction strategy, Scott says he firmly believes there's a need for a social safety net. And he believes there are state workers, like those at the Department of Elder Affairs, who help provide that net.
"And thank you very much for all your hard work. I've never been involved in government. Nobody really knows what everybody in government does, and unless you're getting a specific service, you don't have any idea. It's like none of us learn about things that don't impact us very well. So what you do is very important to the state - very important to the citizens of the state - and everything I've been told forever is you guys do a great job."
The only question now is how the combination of Governor Scott and the legislature may change that job and how many state employees there will be to do it.