Cam Fentriss, FRSA LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL
Florida’s legislative session began on March 7 and this year promises to give us (and everyone else) a bumpy ride so we all need to buckle up.
The big and known issues we will tackle include workers’ compensation and modifying how we update the Florida Building Code. Other issues we are expecting to encounter are proposed changes to the construction lien law, to the construction defects law, and to the statute of repose.
For this article, please put all those issues aside so we can focus on an issue that is of interest to us for all the wrong reasons: economic development.
You may have been reading newspaper articles about struggles between Governor Rick Scott and House Speaker Richard Corcoran over the fate of Visit Florida and Enterprise Florida. Governor Scott supports them both and wants them to continue to receive taxpayer dollars, but House Speaker Corcoran wants pretty much the opposite. He feels strongly that these are functions to be paid for by business and not taxpayer funds.
Bringing tourism and new business to Florida is a good thing, right? We would be among many who can support this because anything that brings more dollars to Florida is good for us all. Except that’s not exactly how it has been working out so far.
You may recall that we recently dealt with a truly stupid plan to bring the “corporate headquarters” of a “national roofing company” to Florida as part of a way to increase business and create jobs. How many roofing companies do you know that can place their “corporate headquarters” in some corner of the country, then do business all over the country? Is a roofing company just like a pest control company or newspaper where the customer calls an 800 number and the operator dispatches a service technician with a sprayer or adds the customer’s address to the appropriate delivery route? NO.
If you are a company looking to relocate to Florida and you see an opportunity to do it with a big fat subsidy – hey, why not? That doesn’t make it right, but the ultimate responsibility to research and understand the industry rests with the government entity that is handing out the money.
Enterprise Florida is supposed to attract new business to Florida. It is not supposed to lure more of the same business that is already here and well established. That is not economic development. Instead it is economic copying or economic displacement or economic competition that produces no actual change to the state of Florida. In case any of those Enterprise Florida people who cut this deal are reading this, let me explain. If you bring in more businesses to meet the same level of demand for a good or service, there is no
economic development because you have not developed anything or increased business in any way. You have only replaced one service provider with another one.
That our state government could hire such gullible people who fell for that “corporate headquarters” nonsense is very embarrassing. But hiring people who will not even research before cutting a deal is inexcusable. Is it too much to ask that people hired to negotiate these agreements learn something about the industry or the business they are trying to lure to the state? Could they also be required to know something about basic economics (like the law of supply and demand) before they collect a fat paycheck? Since the
goal of Enterprise Florida is supposed to be attracting new business to Florida (rather than bringing in more of the same business), is it too much to ask that they at least check the Yellow Pages before excitedly taking credit for essentially paying off a company to do what we are already doing?
Worse yet, by the time they actually did make the deal, Enterprise Florida absolutely knew exactly why their plan was wrong and stupid (because we made that very clear to them), but they did it anyway. Let me emphasize: once they knew this project would not create hundreds of new jobs and would not bring anything new to Florida, they did it anyway.
Enterprise Florida’s misstep takes employees and business away from you, and for every job they will claim to create, one existing and well established job will be eliminated. And our government will be paying them for “creating” the job that already existed without a government subsidy. The governor will be counting that job as a newly created job, so next time you hear him boast about the number of jobs he has created, you can wonder just how many of those jobs were “created” the same way as these. Credibility does matter.
As you read more about the developing disagreement between the governor and House speaker, keep in mind that the governor knew bringing the “national roofing company” here was not economic development and not a job creator. He thought it was okay to spend your taxpayer dollars for a company to move here to compete with you. Most importantly, he had an opportunity to pull back on this (after we made our case) but he chose to do just the opposite.
Anna Cam Fentriss is an attorney licensed in Florida since 1988 representing clients with legislative and state agency interests. Cam has represented FRSA since 1993, is an Honorary Member of FRSA, recipient of the FRSA President’s Award and the Campanella Award in 2010.
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