Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds said Thursday he supports broadening the uses of hotel taxes in Florida, specifically to allow the levy on room nights and short-term rental stays to be spent on transportation and infrastructure projects.<\/p>\n
While both he and his Democratic opponent David Jolly have said they support reform, Donalds said he prefers counties maintain control of the funds.<\/p>\n
Jolly has said<\/a> counties should be able to use some tourist tax funds locally, but he also wants those levies to help pay for statewide programs such as a catastrophic insurance fund to cover all hurricane and natural disaster losses.<\/p>\n Donalds said he disagrees with what he described as a state takeover of the lucrative tax and said he wants to empower local governments.<\/p>\n \u201cJolly\u2019s insurance proposal is to take that money \u2026 that\u2019s a non-starter,\u201d Donalds said. \u201cWe want to look at uses. Make sure the tourism industries are getting what they need while also making sure our infrastructure is also keeping up.\u201d<\/p>\n Donalds was visiting Orlando on Thursday for a question-and-answer session with voters at the National Entrepreneur Center at the Fashion Square Mall, where he held a wide-ranging discussion touching on topics like regulating artificial intelligence, AI data centers and school choice.<\/p>\n In Orange County, where the economy is dominated by tourism, officials expect Tourist Development Tax collections to top $400 million this year, a record high.<\/p>\n But state law restricts the tax\u2019s use to tourism marketing or to other ventures that expand tourism \u2014 so it has been spent to expand the Orange County Convention Center and build the Kia Center and the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.<\/p>\n In recent years, some residents have pushed for expanded uses of the tax, potentially on transportation, workforce housing, law enforcement or other services strained by tens of millions of annual visitors but funded by local taxpayers.<\/p>\n A citizens task force last month recommended Orange County more aggressively lobby the state for the authority to use the money in other ways.<\/p>\n Asked by the Orlando Sentinel about that discussion, Donalds said he wants to work with local governments and the tourism industry to do that.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I\u2019ve said when I\u2019ve talked to restaurant, lodging and that industry, is we want to make sure that, yes, those dollars are being used for tourism, which is how it was designed,\u201d he said. He added there should be a \u201cconcrete agreement\u201d that those dollars are being used as intended.<\/p>\n But if such levies are raking in hundreds of millions, he said, \u201cmaybe we need to look at decreasing that tax or allowing for additional uses for road construction and things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n He cautioned that \u201cif there\u2019s room to do some of the other key things, especially around infrastructure, then let\u2019s have an agreement to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n In a previous interview with the Sentinel<\/a>, Jolly said he too supports broadening uses of the tax.<\/p>\n He said that in addition to the insurance fund, he\u2019s interested in using the money to pay for a 30% pay increase for teachers. Potentially, counties could use some of the remaining money on local issues like transportation and workforce housing.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have a crisis of convention centers, we have a crisis of teacher pay, we have a crisis of homeowner\u2019s insurance,\u201d Jolly said.<\/p>\n Amid Donalds\u2019 criticism Thursday of Jolly\u2019s hurricane fund proposal, Jolly\u2019s campaign sent out a release attacking what it called Donalds\u2019 \u201clie\u201d about an \u201cinvented $1,000 \u2018hurricane tax.’\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Donalds\u2019 campaign has used the \u201churricane tax\u201d language in a TV spot, but Jolly\u2019s campaign said the Florida State University report cited in the ad did not actually review his proposal for a hurricane fund, which it said has the potential to cut homeowners insurance costs by 60% to 70%.<\/p>\n