Tallahassee’s intramural Republican fight between the governor and the house speaker over abolishing Enterprise Florida and Visit Florida is part schadenfreud for Democrats and part shoot yourself in the foot for all Floridians. It’s tempting to enjoy the spectacle of the jobs panderer and a GOPster ideologue going at it, but the reality is that a zero-sum approach is not good for Florida. Both EF and VF need to be transparent and streamlined–not scrapped.
For example, there’s a middle ground between “corporate welfare” and “unilateral disarmament.” The real world of what works and how the competition plays the job-inducing, incentives game has to be factored in.
But there’s no lack of irony–and maybe karma–where Rick Scott is concerned. His “Fighting for Florida’s Jobs” tour has taken him to the legislative turf of certain House members, where he has called them out for backing Speaker Richard Corcoran and not seeing the error of their “job-killing” ways.
But where was Scott nearly seven years ago, when the Orlando-Tampa megalopolis high-speed rail was positioned to bring jobs and a lot more to this region? Recall he never even permitted bids so that cost overruns and ridership projections could be covered without Florida being “on the hook.”
Scott is still the con-job governor.