I cover Florida politics for a living. Most local agenda items don’t break through. This one should.

On Tuesday, Leon County Commissioners will vote on whether to transfer the Council on Culture & Arts’ (COCA) grant administration authority to the county’s Division of Tourism. COCA leadership, by all accounts, learned of the proposal when the agenda was published — giving a 40-year institution barely seven days to respond. If that gives you city of Tallahassee/TMH hospital sale PTSD, you’re not entirely wrong to feel it.

Let’s flag a few parts of the county’s case that deserve a closer look.

Start with the reserves. The agenda item points to roughly $3 million in “cash.” That deserves context. COCA’s financials show that out of $2.5 million in the bank, $1.3 million is already committed to grantees and held in trust until disbursement on a contractual schedule — money that will fly out the door in the coming months. The remaining $1 million is discretionary reserve, used as active working capital to get grants out the door faster while waiting for tourist development tax distribution. Over the past decade, three independent audit firms have reviewed the organization’s books and found no material weaknesses.

Here’s the financial stat that matters: 93% of COCA funds received go directly to artists and programs. That’s a number that should make all taxpayers proud.

Next is return on investment. The county faults COCA for not producing the same economic impact metrics used for sports tourism: hotel nights, direct visitor spending. That comparison doesn’t quite fit. Cultural infrastructure supports tourism in a different way, and it does that job well. But it also helps make a community a place people choose to live, work, and play, which is part of economic development even if it doesn’t show up neatly in a tourism spreadsheet.

Then there’s the “everybody’s doing it” argument. The agenda item points to peer counties that have moved grant administration in-house. What it leaves out is that the landscape is more mixed. St. Johns County, cited in the county’s report and one of Florida’s fastest-growing, continues to operate through an independent arts council under a county agreement. Sarasota, also cited in the analysis and a community whose arts identity is central to its brand, does the same.

These are not outliers; they’re examples of communities that have found ways to maintain both accountability and independence.

There is also the question of outside funding. COCA’s designation as a local arts agency allows it to maintain relationships with organizations like the National Endowment for the Arts, the Knight Foundation, and the Levitt Family Foundation. Those relationships brought more than $259,000 into Leon County this year. It’s not clear those dollars would follow a shift into a tourism office.

Finally, this change would transfer decision-making away from those intimately familiar with the arts and hand it to bureaucrats, where politics will surely taint the process.

None of this is to say the county’s concerns should be dismissed. Oversight and accountability matter. But so does process — especially when dealing with a long-standing community partner.

Option 2 on Tuesday’s agenda would extend the current agreement for one year and give both sides time to work through these questions together. Given what’s at stake, that seems like a reasonable place to land.