With Florida's scandal-plagued tourism promotion agency facing a massive budget cut engineered by House Republican leaders, some lawmakers are urging Gov. Rick Scott to veto the reduction and call a special legislative session aimed at maintaining the agency's funding.

  • Budget cut Visit Florida funding by two-thirds
  • Scott fought for preserving Visit Florida funding before budget passed
  • Vetoing budget would eliminate Visit Florida's funding entirely

The measure to whittle Visit Florida's budget by two-thirds - to $25 million from the current $76 million - passed by less-than-a-veto-proof majority. Combined with Scott's pronouncements that he's considering vetoing all of part of a budget that doesn't include most of his priorities, the prospects of a Visit Florida-themed special session appear promising.

"I'm hopeful that the governor will exercise his prerogative, will call us back to Tallahassee and will make us do the right thing for economic development in Florida and for education in Florida," Sen. Jack Latvala (R-Clearwater), the Senate's budget chief and a Visit Florida ally, told reporters Monday.

Visit Florida has come under intense scrutiny in the House, however, with a coalition of free market conservatives led by Speaker Richard Corcoran bemoaning the tens of millions of taxpayer dollars the agency has spent on promotional projects, including a music video that netted the rapper Pitbull $1 million. Slashing the agency's funding, the coalition has argued, is a form of overdue punishment.

"They are, in a real sense, on probation," said Rep. Paul Renner (R-Palm Coast). "And before we hand a credit card to someone who's misused that credit card, we want to know that it's going to be used properly."

If Scott were to veto the legislation (HB 5501) that cuts Visit Florida's budget, the agency would see its funding completely eliminated. Calculating that even the House hardliners would find that scenario unacceptable, the governor's supporters say a special session could give him a degree of negotiating authority he lacked during the regular session, which ended last week.

"I am shocked that anybody would think that we should cut one dollar of Visit Florida," Scott said as budget negotiations began. "We should be investing more dollars, so we get more tourists so we get more jobs."

With the budget set to take effect July 1, any special session would have to take place before then. Legislative leaders are already discussing the possibility of holding a special session devoted to implementing Florida's voter-approved medical marijuana amendment, a thorny issue that eluded compromise in the waning hours of the regular session.