Better known as a spy who uses special ops training to help
people, Jeffrey Donovan played a lobbyist for the TV (news) cameras Tuesday to highlight the economic impact his show brings to Florida.

^{Photo: Jeffrey Donovan, star of Burn Notice, lobbying for more film tax incentives. On the left is CFO Alex Sink and on the right is Rep. Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda.}

The star of USA Network’s top-rated show Burn Notice, Donovan was at the Capitol
to lobby for more state film incentives and to help announce the new Film,
Entertainment and Television legislative caucus.

Flanked by about a dozen lawmakers, CFO Alex Sink and State
Film Commissioner Lucia Fishburne on the Fourth Floor Rotunda, Donovan relayed
one example of how his show pumps up South Florida’s
economy.

While filming an episode in the second season, the film crew
befriended a flower vendor in a bad area near Hialeah. The next season, a writer for the
show crafted an episode around a similar flower vendor and the show paid
$10,000 to rent out his shop for a day.

“The impact locally was, for this gentleman, enormous,” Donovan
said.

Fishburne said Burn Notice has paid more than $28.4
million in Florida
wages and is responsible for booking more than 7,000 hotel room nights.

Of the $10.8 million incentive budget in the current fiscal
year, the TV show will receive $5.2 million.

“It has truly become an incentives game,” Fishburne said.

State Rep. Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda, D-Tallahassee,
formed the new film industry caucus, which counts 20 lawmakers as members.

“The purpose of the caucus is to put a spotlight on the
industry so we can re-gain our competitive edge,” she said.

Florida has slipped from third
in the county (behind California and New York) to out of the
top 10 in terms of the number of productions shot in the state.

As an aside: Donovan noted – to thunderous
applause -- that he is in the process of establishing residency in Florida – which lost
population last year for the first time since WWII.

Not to piggyback on his star power, but this reporter is
also in the process of establishing his residency in the Sunshine State.

-- Lee Logan, Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau