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Privatizing the Pinellas tourism agency fraught with drawbacks

Outgoing Visit St. Pete-Clearwater head David Downing suggested the agency could be better off going private.
 
Published Jan. 18, 2019

David Downing heads up Visit St. Pete-Clearwater, the public agency charged with attracting tourists to Pinellas County.

At least he does until Feb. 1, when his resignation takes effect. He announced he was quitting three days after Tampa Bay Times reporter Mark Puente asked some tough questions about whether he was blending business and personal spending.

Over five years, Downing rolled up more than $300,000 on a county credit card, much of it for meals and alcohol. The way he recorded his vacation hours raised eyebrows, too.

RELATED: Pinellas tourism leader David Downing took vacation on taxpayers' dime.

At his final appearance in front of the Tourist Development Council last week Downing encouraged board members to consider privatizing Visit St. Pete-Clearwater.

The private sector provides many services more efficiently than government. But this feels a lot like someone who got caught with their hand in a cookie jar filled with tax dollars and now wants to hide the cookie jar.

Pinellas residents should have an unobstructed view of how those tax dollars are being spent. Privatizing the public agency would make that nearly impossible.

The marketing agency gets its $40 million annual budget from the 6 percent tourism tax charged on overnight stays. The money might come mostly from out-of-towners who visit our beaches, but it's still tax dollars. Wasting it leaves less to spend on important tourism priorities.

Like several other counties, Hillsborough set up its tourism marketing arm in a way that shields how it spends its bed tax money. The marketing pros in that county may squeeze top value from every tax dollar. They might be fiscally and morally upstanding. But you can't be sure. They don't let you look at their spending in any detail. Trust us, they say. We know what we're doing.

But local public officials, the ones in charge of our money, shouldn't be allowed to play in the dark. The bed tax dollars are spent on marketing campaigns, not matters of national security.

MORE BUSINESS: Meet the Tampa business owner who will translate anything.

Supporters of privatizing say the move would allow Visit St. Pete-Clearwater to keep competitors from knowing so much about their strategy and contract negotiations. The agency would be able to move faster and with more discretion.

That argument has merit. When a few tax-funded marketing agencies act in secret, it tilts the playing field. But that's the far lesser of two evils. Our less scrupulous public servants have left too many reminders of what can happen without adequate oversight.

Remember the Pinellas County Construction Licensing Board? It imploded thanks to an executive director who ran the place like a personal fiefdom.

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Two local jobs centers, which received tens of millions in federal funding, engaged in a level of deceit and incompetence that would make a Watergate burglar blush. The FBI is looking into that one.

And just a few years ago, Visit Florida tried to keep secret a $1 million payment to Miami rapper Pitbull, who was hired to help promote the state.

Pinellas has set records for the number of tourists in recent years. That's great, but success should be expected. It doesn't give public servants license to take financial liberties. After all, the sheriff doesn't get to fudge a few financial reports because the crime rate dropped.

If that standard is too onerous, stay out of public service.

Contact Graham Brink at gbrink@tampabay.com. Follow @GrahamBrink.