November 12, 2025 • 18 mins
Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell discusses his latest article, this one about Orange County preparing an overdue crackdown on Visit Orlando spending.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey, Dad, I just got back from Madison this weekend.
I know you're not from there, You're from Green Bay,
but I just want to give the whole state of
Wisconsin like props. That city of Madison is probably one
of the coolest cities I've been to. Yes, and I'm
going up there with Berlin, Munich, London, Amsterdam, New York, Orlando,
and I lived there in Miami. Like just the whole vibe,
(00:26):
the whole walk ability of it in between the isthmus Man,
Madison was awesome.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Love Madison should check it out. Welcome back to the
Joke Combray Show, Real Radio one oh four point one.
I didn't throw my random travel dart. Hey, it's your
loss in Wisconsin, I tell you. Apparently Bank is your
fork like he did say Munich, Bank is your fork
(00:56):
like you where it's B eight and K. Go to
Real Radio Dot Ben. Since I had await for your
chance in a thousand bucks, I'm Jim. There's deb hell.
Jack is here as well. Yeah, every Wednesday around this
time we invite to show him to come over and
talk about some things he's got going on, what he's
writing about. Orlando Sentinels where you can find him Wednesdays,
Thursdays and Sundays. You guys give it up good lound
(01:17):
for mister Scott Maxwell.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
What you know, if we're throwing random travel darts out,
I'd like to throw a shout out to Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Another great state, Minnesota. Huh. I guess if I had
to throw one out there that I would tell people
to go to. That's the best deal for your money.
And it's a lot of fun as Maine lovely. Yeah,
Maine in New Mexico are two like kind of outlier
spots that I've experienced over the last and Jackie shouldn't
have actually even had a parallel experience in New Mexico
that gat when him and he and Naomi went out.
(01:49):
But I've been to Maine a couple of times. I
have to tell you, man, great food, great beer if
you're a pothead, weeds legal, and naturally one of the
coolest states that we have with Keady in National Park
on the east side, then going westward Quebec. It's just
a coolest place. It's a and it's a it's a
grown up place to visit. There are no there ain't
(02:09):
no effing around up in Maine. Dude. That's a grown
up place to go.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
We did a Katie a couple of years ago, and
I would say the exact same thing. One of the
coolest things about there is you don't even have to
be huge into hiking, but you can start on a
trail right at the ocean, you know, right at the ocean,
I mean on the beach, and if you're you know,
you got a little bit of fitness.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
But thirty minutes later you're on a cliff.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, I don't know, five.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Hundred feet above the water. It is.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
It is a really neat But the problem is today
is like the last day you can visit Maine until March, right.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah, exactly. The other issue is this, I say issue
is on an issue. But when you go there for
the first time, we were in September, when we went
a year.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
After early October, same yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
So when and you're right, it gets it gets cold
quick up there, right. I mean your August evenings are
like in the late August is like in the thirties already.
But when you drive through a Kadian National park and
eperience that it seems fake, like it seems like something
like an anomaly naturally happened, and it just seems fake
and it seems like something somebody built because it's so beautiful.
You can't believe that anything naturally can happen so perfectly
(03:12):
like that, you know.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Yeah, and the weather is so cool.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
We were sweating our rears off while hiking at the
top of a mountain in Acadia in the morning and
sweaters and jeans and as the mist and the fog
came in over the evening on a boat ride while
looking for whales.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, for sure, awesome place up there. Charlie Fermin just
texted in. He's listening and Joe says, it's snowing in
Bangor today. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's where
you're flying in back. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Well the other that you mentioned, Jim, that you've actually
you are responsible for putting on my bucket list, and
I feel like it was was it Main or New
Hampshire where you did your snow movie?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Oh that's Main Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've got this straight
hookup for that. If you ever want to have a
snow building experience, I've got the spot. And the cool
thing is you booked the lodge, which is like basically
brand new and on the way to the lodge from
the airport, you stop and get all your snowball billing stuff.
They deliver your snowmobile to the lodge the next morning
and off you go. It is Was it something like
Partridge Lake Parlan.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Believe it or not, Jim, I wrote it down when
you first mentioned it to me like a decade.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Yeah, you made it sound so.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, Lake Parland Lodge. Our buddy Joe Cruisey and his
wife Liz own that and uh and they're amazing people
for one thing. But that place up there is just
absolutely magical, dude. And it's very affordable. That's a good
thing about it too. Scott. Just be real careful if
you're gonna snowmobill with your wife. It can be dangerous
for spouses.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
I remember hearing that part as well.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
I don't get reminded about it though, not even.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
More Well, you know what great places to live right
now this time of year, This is a pretty damn
nice place.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Yeah. I mean, you cannot beat the weather today.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
You cannot. You cannot, in fact.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Before while I'm just randomly thinking about it.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Two weeks from tomorrow, is that?
Speaker 1 (04:58):
No?
Speaker 4 (04:58):
Three weeks whenever? Thanks?
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Yeah, Thanksgiving is is my annual list of one hundred
and one things to love about Central Florida. So if
any of your listeners want to send in suggestion, I
usually get about five hundred suggestions.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
I'm looking for restaurants, you know, museums, peeps.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Natural attractions, people, dishes, outdoor spots, any trails, anything you
might like that you want to put on there.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
You can send them to me. S Maxwell at Orlando
Central Dotum.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Yeah. Events. I actually saw you put out the holler
for that last week, so I know that's one of
your more popular columns throughout the year. So check that
out for sure. Speaking of popular columns, I read your
piece today about visit Orlando, and you know, we've talked
about visit Orlando quite a bit on the show with
you over the last years because it's a valiant effort
to you know, shed some light on what's happening over there,
and it looks like, finally maybe there may be some
(05:46):
movement on, you know, regulating what happens with that place.
What did you find?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Yeah, you know, I decided to take a step back,
and one of the things I was looking at it
is we're at a point in America right now where
there's a real crackdown on spending.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
I mean, we know that. You know, you say the
word doge.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
The word didn't exist a year ago, literally, and now
everybody knows what and there's a crackdown and visit Orlando
is the absolute opposite of that. Their budget, their subsidies
have tripled over the course of a decade. They went
from thirty five million dollars and taxes a year they
were getting, you know, as the region's tourism Promotion Bureau,
to one hundred and five million dollars. And that's a
(06:24):
lot of money. That's that's more money than some small
cities are spending. And one of my beefs has been
that there's not really been a whole lot of checks
and balances, and every time we found something that was
questionable about what they were doing, like spending nine thousand
dollars on a business class airfare to Dubai, throwing one
hundred and three thousand dollars party when they were running
(06:44):
radio ads, and I know we like radio ads, but
when they were running radio ads around Central Florida that
were encouraging people to be grateful for having a tourism economy,
that's fine for a PSA, but that's not what we
pay tax dollars to Orlando for. We pay them to
get other people to get their ass down to Orlando.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
I mean that's the way I pay.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
And every time we would ask about that kind of money,
they would they would say, oh, you know what, that's
private money. I know, we get a lot of tax dollars,
but we're spending our own private money, and so you
don't need to worry about any of that. Well, I
and some other people were looking at their budget and
just figuring I don't know how that worked, because the
private tax dollars donated from theme parks and hotels account
(07:28):
for about three million dollars of their one hundred and
five million dollars, and I think I think it should
be a boatload. I think, if this agency is doing
a great bang up job for putting people in hotels
and people and theme parks, I mean they're the companies
who are benefiting for it, I think it should be
like a one to one ratio. But even if you don't,
I couldn't figure out how three million dollars was covering
(07:49):
every single questionable expense every time we had it. Well,
the auditors got in there, and this is an audit
that only happens like once a decade basically, And they.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
Got in and they said, there's some bs in here.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Among the things they found was they were calling private
money public money.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
Excuse me, vice versa.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
They were calling public money private money, and that's a
big accounting point.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
And no receipts. I mean, it's the thing is that
you show us. I mean, I think you've been saying
the column basically, you know, I paraphrasing, but you know, hey,
if this is the case, just show us, and then
you know, we will at least have a record of
it for sure. I mean, one hundred and three thousand
dollars for somebody's retirement party.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yeah, yeah, that was another. There was twenty was it
twenty or forty thousand dollars for a one night party
up in New York that the comptroller flagged. And it
was it was like every time something got flagged, they
went private money, private money. And he said, well, well
they looked at one year and they found I think
it was about three and a half million dollars worth
of what visitor Lander was saying private money, and then
went that's not private money. For instance, they would say,
(08:45):
like take some money that was tax dollars and invested
in something and it would get returns, and they'd call
it private money, and they'd say, that's that's not private money.
You know, money that's that's yielded with tax with public
money is still public money. And you shouldn't be scared
to account for all that in my estimation, and that's
what the comptroller said. And finally, after years of you know,
most elected officials cowtowing to tourism, there are a number
(09:07):
of county commissioners who are saying it's time to crack down.
I think they should cut back on the budget in general,
but they're talking about seriously cracking.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
And not to mention, I think I can't remember if
you mentioned in this story, but I know you and
I have talked about this before. Is just how how
kind of odd it is that visit Orlando is basically
a subsidy for theme parks to get free advertising for
their businesses. I mean, they're making billions of dollars, yet
the taxpayers here in Central Florida and the tourists that
come in are paying for them to advertise their companies.
(09:36):
And I've said it for years, what are they gonna do?
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Leave?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
I mean, you're not gonna go build another Disney somewhere else,
just you know, you don't have to play hardball, per se.
But Jesus make it fair. You know.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Well that's exactly right. And you know there was a
story just last week, I think this week. Last week
they said something like Central Florida is tourism numbers surged
because of Epic Universe. Yeah, that's why tourism surges. Because
Universal opens a new theme park, because Disney does a
new Avatar World, because Royal Caribbean puts a new ship
at at Port Canaveral. It's not because of the tourism campaign.
(10:10):
But even if it is, even if marketing, and I
think you can argue that marketing can be a good idea,
every other industry pays for their own marketing.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
I was about to say, what if I had a
company out there, I'd love to I've been fun spot
would love to tap into that one hundred and five
million dollars probably doesn't tap into that's the wrong, okay,
but but I mean any bit some bakery that you
may have, I'd love to get ten thousand dollars a
month to be able to promote my bakery or my
Orlando business that we're supposed to be supporting.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Yeah, when a when a car dealer wants to bring
in customers, sure car dealer reaches into his own wallet.
If a law firm wants new customers, reaches into his
own wallet. You know, John Morgan and Dan Newlan are
on your radio station all the time. But with this
one industry, it's subsidized through hotel tax dollars and UH
and and in other places those hotel tax dollars actually
(11:00):
hey for the services that that tourists the strains they put.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
On our economy.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
You know, we've talked about the transit, you know, the buses,
We've talked about housing.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
But man, one of the things that I think gets
overlooked is cops.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Tourists place a big demand on cops, sometimes because they
need help and sometimes because they get their drunk asses arrested.
I mean, I mean there's a big cost. I mean,
as the head of the Christian Service Center always says,
if you've met a tourist that came to Orlando for
three days and didn't flush his toilet, in other words,
use our water, I'd.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
Like to meet him or.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Are any of that stuff and It's so funny, this
whole paragraph dedicated to this firm, the Razorfish firm.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Oh yeah, yeah, so there's a And that's another thing
that has long bothered me.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
Some of them, and I.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Would think bothers, other CEOs, I would think they would
start to speak up. Some of the biggest checks and
contracts they have are for companies that aren't based anywhere
in Florida.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
They're based in New York. I think there was one
based in Wisconsin.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
We may love Wisconsin, but their base and if I
was trying to I would want you're telling me there's
no creative agency, there's no firm that can come up
with an ad campaign.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
And then the interesting thing is that we're not talking
about small dollars here. And this is this is right
from your column. It says the comptrollers check Registry shows
that Visit Orlando has cut monthly checks this year, ranging
from one hundred and seventy two thousand to one point
seventy five million to a New York based headquartered firm
(12:29):
called Razorfish, which I guess is basically an advertising firm
that comes up with concepts and ideas at which they
did this thing called Orlando's. But the fact is exactly
what you say. You're telling me in all of Orlando
and all of Florida, from Miami to Orlando to Tampa,
that we couldn't find a creative firm that could do
that work and keep that money in house.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Like you get, the base rate that I see this
firm getting from looking through two years of check registries
is two hundred and seventy thousand dollars a month.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
That's bananas.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
And I've seen monthly amen's as high as one point
seven and two million dollars a nine hundred thousand. In
other words, we're talking real money here and I but
there's it's always just viewed as this this agency has.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
Been viewed as untouchable.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
But I think one of the other things that really
started to rub some of the county commissioners the wrong way,
and God bless them for it, was visitor Lander was
spending money on lobbying, uh and basically lobbying for their
own agency, saying we deserve more money.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
That's if you think about how meta and.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
How nuts that is for taxpayers to give money to
an agency to lobby for more tax dollars.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
Oh yeah, that's everything that's wrong with government.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Right right, right right? That is a core bad value.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
And by the way, the other the other they.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
Stay focused on the mission.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
I think they need to have their private interests donating more.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
I think I mean Disney.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
They do things like putting many Mouse's face on a
bus in Times Square. There's one company that's benefiting from
something like that, that's Disney, and Disney should probably be
the one paying for it, and mine mine. So anyway,
the comptroller, his name is Phil Diamond. He seems to
be taking this real serious. And to give a shout
out to two of the commissioners, Maira Uribe and Kelly Simrad.
(14:11):
They put out a long memo and they sound like
they're not going to be compromising.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
This is all going to come to a head in
a few weeks.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
And not to mention some of the other incitious stuff
that happens, and this happens in Florida a lot from
our own government to agencies of this nature. Are these
no big contracts man? That is that is like, that's
such shaky business when you just you know, you you
have a massive contract, maybe a ten million dollar contract
for a service or a product, and you don't even
bid it out, and of course it winds up into
(14:37):
some brother in law's company. It's just it's so sketch.
Calliga yeah, yeah, you know that.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
You're you're both right.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
And I got to tell you, if I I mean
trends and government EBB and flow, and if I had
to look at the most devious trend that I've seen
in Florida over the last two years, it is this
no big contract thing. And if any and if your
listeners aren't appreciating, I think they would appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (14:59):
I mean, and if most people, if you need to
get a new roof, you.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Don't just call one roofer and ask them how much
it's gonna cost and then go, here's all my money.
You call three roofers and you see what they're gonna do,
and you check their experience, you check what kind of
track record they're doing. Anytime you see a no big
contract that should end up a bright red flag. Often
we've seen, as Jack mentioned with Alligator Alley, there's political
cronies involved.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
Man. I saw one that steam my clams last week.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
So Florida is going after professors for their Charlie kirk
Kirk posts, Okay, fine, that's what they want to do.
But there's a contract to a law firm that is
getting nine hundred and twenty five dollars an hour an
hour to go after the college professors who are posting
about Charlie.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Kirk, and they're gonna lose, right, I mean, those are
First Amendment protected, well other than the if it's a
government agency, they would have to lose. Right.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
Well, it's murky.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
It's a little murky most of their no bid long
because I mean, you know what, an employer has a
right to fire someone for doing something that's you know,
that reflects poorly on the organization.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
Uh, but I think that's.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
A really wide swath, and courts are really reluctant to
step on to say that that that it's obscene speech, sure.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Yeah, almost or vile speech. Almost every one of these
cases I've read about is being challenged in court. I mean,
like nobody's just taking going like nobody's just going, okay, well,
I guess I'll just screwed up. Nobody's doing that.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
And most of and for and the free speech ones
are the ones they keep losing, Like the ones like
stop woke, where they were trying to tell private companies.
You can't have employee training lessons where you tell your
you know, uh employers, well you've never been a black person,
so you might need to uh consider what it's like
to walk in their shoes. Well, Ron DeSantis and James
Uthmeier may not may not like that as a lesson
(16:51):
to employers. But if I if I created ABC Incorporated Contracting,
and I'm spending my own money, and I want to
tell my own employers that because I think it's gonna
help boost my you know, multicultural business.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
That's my own business. And every court has said, who
the hell do you think you are?
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Yeah, yeah, who as a state to try to tell
businesses that they can't do what they want.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
No different than the guy who rolled through his warehouse
a few years back and said, if you don't vote
for this particularly candidate, I don't. I'm not. I can't
guarantee your employment. I mean you you just can't do
stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
No, no, you can't.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
And you're speaking of which before we go off, have
you all talked about uh, you know, do you remember
one of the most famous people in town who did that.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
They basically said, if you, uh, if you don't vote.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
For my guy, you're gonna lose your job or I'm
gonna close down my company and leave Town resorts.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Yeah there, yeah, bing bing, bing all the way around.
It's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Did you see that that Broadway musical starring Kristin Chineworth
is on Broadway now?
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah? Yeah, Savannah and uh Jackie actually just came back
from New York. I think either yesterday the day before, because.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Savannah to admit, I'm curious to see it.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Savannah was up there. It was interesting because today Matthew
Palm uh did a a review of it, and the
review was, look, they made a Broadway They made a
Broadway show about Jackie Siegel. That was pretty much the thing.
I mean, nothing was written about it. Nothing. He just
said that it was that it existed.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
He said, there's some people that have given it surprisingly
good reviews, and a whole lot of people have been
like WTL.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Well, god bless her. I guess always good seeing you, Scott.
We're so late. You do this to us every single time,
Scott Scott, Scott Scott's.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Sketts minutes from me next week?
Speaker 2 (18:29):
All right, no, I will not do that. Good laugh
for Scotty. There you go. Yeah, good seeing you, buddy,
I was always you got man all right for our
seven nine one six four one text us seven seven
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sec with more of the Jim Colbert Shows. Stay put,
Hey, Dad, I just got back from Madison this weekend.
I know you're not from there, You're from Green Bay,
but I just want to give the whole state of
Wisconsin like props. That city of Madison is probably one
of the coolest cities I've been to. Yes, and I'm
going up there with Berlin, Munich, London, Amsterdam, New York, Orlando,
and I lived there in Miami. Like just the whole vibe,
(00:26):
the whole walk ability of it in between the isthmus Man,
Madison was awesome.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Love Madison should check it out. Welcome back to the
Joke Combray Show, Real Radio one oh four point one.
I didn't throw my random travel dart. Hey, it's your
loss in Wisconsin, I tell you. Apparently Bank is your
fork like he did say Munich, Bank is your fork
(00:56):
like you where it's B eight and K. Go to
Real Radio Dot Ben. Since I had await for your
chance in a thousand bucks, I'm Jim. There's deb hell.
Jack is here as well. Yeah, every Wednesday around this
time we invite to show him to come over and
talk about some things he's got going on, what he's
writing about. Orlando Sentinels where you can find him Wednesdays,
Thursdays and Sundays. You guys give it up good lound
(01:17):
for mister Scott Maxwell.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
What you know, if we're throwing random travel darts out,
I'd like to throw a shout out to Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Another great state, Minnesota. Huh. I guess if I had
to throw one out there that I would tell people
to go to. That's the best deal for your money.
And it's a lot of fun as Maine lovely. Yeah,
Maine in New Mexico are two like kind of outlier
spots that I've experienced over the last and Jackie shouldn't
have actually even had a parallel experience in New Mexico
that gat when him and he and Naomi went out.
(01:49):
But I've been to Maine a couple of times. I
have to tell you, man, great food, great beer if
you're a pothead, weeds legal, and naturally one of the
coolest states that we have with Keady in National Park
on the east side, then going westward Quebec. It's just
a coolest place. It's a and it's a it's a
grown up place to visit. There are no there ain't
(02:09):
no effing around up in Maine. Dude. That's a grown
up place to go.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
We did a Katie a couple of years ago, and
I would say the exact same thing. One of the
coolest things about there is you don't even have to
be huge into hiking, but you can start on a
trail right at the ocean, you know, right at the ocean,
I mean on the beach, and if you're you know,
you got a little bit of fitness.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
But thirty minutes later you're on a cliff.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, I don't know, five.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Hundred feet above the water. It is.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
It is a really neat But the problem is today
is like the last day you can visit Maine until March, right.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah, exactly. The other issue is this, I say issue
is on an issue. But when you go there for
the first time, we were in September, when we went
a year.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
After early October, same yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
So when and you're right, it gets it gets cold
quick up there, right. I mean your August evenings are
like in the late August is like in the thirties already.
But when you drive through a Kadian National park and
eperience that it seems fake, like it seems like something
like an anomaly naturally happened, and it just seems fake
and it seems like something somebody built because it's so beautiful.
You can't believe that anything naturally can happen so perfectly
(03:12):
like that, you know.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Yeah, and the weather is so cool.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
We were sweating our rears off while hiking at the
top of a mountain in Acadia in the morning and
sweaters and jeans and as the mist and the fog
came in over the evening on a boat ride while
looking for whales.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, for sure, awesome place up there. Charlie Fermin just
texted in. He's listening and Joe says, it's snowing in
Bangor today. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's where
you're flying in back. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Well the other that you mentioned, Jim, that you've actually
you are responsible for putting on my bucket list, and
I feel like it was was it Main or New
Hampshire where you did your snow movie?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Oh that's Main Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've got this straight
hookup for that. If you ever want to have a
snow building experience, I've got the spot. And the cool
thing is you booked the lodge, which is like basically
brand new and on the way to the lodge from
the airport, you stop and get all your snowball billing stuff.
They deliver your snowmobile to the lodge the next morning
and off you go. It is Was it something like
Partridge Lake Parlan.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Believe it or not, Jim, I wrote it down when
you first mentioned it to me like a decade.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Yeah, you made it sound so.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, Lake Parland Lodge. Our buddy Joe Cruisey and his
wife Liz own that and uh and they're amazing people
for one thing. But that place up there is just
absolutely magical, dude. And it's very affordable. That's a good
thing about it too. Scott. Just be real careful if
you're gonna snowmobill with your wife. It can be dangerous
for spouses.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
I remember hearing that part as well.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
I don't get reminded about it though, not even.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
More Well, you know what great places to live right
now this time of year, This is a pretty damn
nice place.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Yeah. I mean, you cannot beat the weather today.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
You cannot. You cannot, in fact.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Before while I'm just randomly thinking about it.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Two weeks from tomorrow, is that?
Speaker 1 (04:58):
No?
Speaker 4 (04:58):
Three weeks whenever? Thanks?
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Yeah, Thanksgiving is is my annual list of one hundred
and one things to love about Central Florida. So if
any of your listeners want to send in suggestion, I
usually get about five hundred suggestions.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
I'm looking for restaurants, you know, museums, peeps.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Natural attractions, people, dishes, outdoor spots, any trails, anything you
might like that you want to put on there.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
You can send them to me. S Maxwell at Orlando
Central Dotum.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Yeah. Events. I actually saw you put out the holler
for that last week, so I know that's one of
your more popular columns throughout the year. So check that
out for sure. Speaking of popular columns, I read your
piece today about visit Orlando, and you know, we've talked
about visit Orlando quite a bit on the show with
you over the last years because it's a valiant effort
to you know, shed some light on what's happening over there,
and it looks like, finally maybe there may be some
(05:46):
movement on, you know, regulating what happens with that place.
What did you find?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Yeah, you know, I decided to take a step back,
and one of the things I was looking at it
is we're at a point in America right now where
there's a real crackdown on spending.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
I mean, we know that. You know, you say the
word doge.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
The word didn't exist a year ago, literally, and now
everybody knows what and there's a crackdown and visit Orlando
is the absolute opposite of that. Their budget, their subsidies
have tripled over the course of a decade. They went
from thirty five million dollars and taxes a year they
were getting, you know, as the region's tourism Promotion Bureau,
to one hundred and five million dollars. And that's a
(06:24):
lot of money. That's that's more money than some small
cities are spending. And one of my beefs has been
that there's not really been a whole lot of checks
and balances, and every time we found something that was
questionable about what they were doing, like spending nine thousand
dollars on a business class airfare to Dubai, throwing one
hundred and three thousand dollars party when they were running
(06:44):
radio ads, and I know we like radio ads, but
when they were running radio ads around Central Florida that
were encouraging people to be grateful for having a tourism economy,
that's fine for a PSA, but that's not what we
pay tax dollars to Orlando for. We pay them to
get other people to get their ass down to Orlando.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
I mean that's the way I pay.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
And every time we would ask about that kind of money,
they would they would say, oh, you know what, that's
private money. I know, we get a lot of tax dollars,
but we're spending our own private money, and so you
don't need to worry about any of that. Well, I
and some other people were looking at their budget and
just figuring I don't know how that worked, because the
private tax dollars donated from theme parks and hotels account
(07:28):
for about three million dollars of their one hundred and
five million dollars, and I think I think it should
be a boatload. I think, if this agency is doing
a great bang up job for putting people in hotels
and people and theme parks, I mean they're the companies
who are benefiting for it, I think it should be
like a one to one ratio. But even if you don't,
I couldn't figure out how three million dollars was covering
(07:49):
every single questionable expense every time we had it. Well,
the auditors got in there, and this is an audit
that only happens like once a decade basically, And they.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
Got in and they said, there's some bs in here.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Among the things they found was they were calling private
money public money.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
Excuse me, vice versa.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
They were calling public money private money, and that's a
big accounting point.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
And no receipts. I mean, it's the thing is that
you show us. I mean, I think you've been saying
the column basically, you know, I paraphrasing, but you know, hey,
if this is the case, just show us, and then
you know, we will at least have a record of
it for sure. I mean, one hundred and three thousand
dollars for somebody's retirement party.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yeah, yeah, that was another. There was twenty was it
twenty or forty thousand dollars for a one night party
up in New York that the comptroller flagged. And it
was it was like every time something got flagged, they
went private money, private money. And he said, well, well
they looked at one year and they found I think
it was about three and a half million dollars worth
of what visitor Lander was saying private money, and then
went that's not private money. For instance, they would say,
(08:45):
like take some money that was tax dollars and invested
in something and it would get returns, and they'd call
it private money, and they'd say, that's that's not private money.
You know, money that's that's yielded with tax with public
money is still public money. And you shouldn't be scared
to account for all that in my estimation, and that's
what the comptroller said. And finally, after years of you know,
most elected officials cowtowing to tourism, there are a number
(09:07):
of county commissioners who are saying it's time to crack down.
I think they should cut back on the budget in general,
but they're talking about seriously cracking.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
And not to mention, I think I can't remember if
you mentioned in this story, but I know you and
I have talked about this before. Is just how how
kind of odd it is that visit Orlando is basically
a subsidy for theme parks to get free advertising for
their businesses. I mean, they're making billions of dollars, yet
the taxpayers here in Central Florida and the tourists that
come in are paying for them to advertise their companies.
(09:36):
And I've said it for years, what are they gonna do?
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Leave?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
I mean, you're not gonna go build another Disney somewhere else,
just you know, you don't have to play hardball, per se.
But Jesus make it fair. You know.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Well that's exactly right. And you know there was a
story just last week, I think this week. Last week
they said something like Central Florida is tourism numbers surged
because of Epic Universe. Yeah, that's why tourism surges. Because
Universal opens a new theme park, because Disney does a
new Avatar World, because Royal Caribbean puts a new ship
at at Port Canaveral. It's not because of the tourism campaign.
(10:10):
But even if it is, even if marketing, and I
think you can argue that marketing can be a good idea,
every other industry pays for their own marketing.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
I was about to say, what if I had a
company out there, I'd love to I've been fun spot
would love to tap into that one hundred and five
million dollars probably doesn't tap into that's the wrong, okay,
but but I mean any bit some bakery that you
may have, I'd love to get ten thousand dollars a
month to be able to promote my bakery or my
Orlando business that we're supposed to be supporting.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Yeah, when a when a car dealer wants to bring
in customers, sure car dealer reaches into his own wallet.
If a law firm wants new customers, reaches into his
own wallet. You know, John Morgan and Dan Newlan are
on your radio station all the time. But with this
one industry, it's subsidized through hotel tax dollars and UH
and and in other places those hotel tax dollars actually
(11:00):
hey for the services that that tourists the strains they put.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
On our economy.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
You know, we've talked about the transit, you know, the buses,
We've talked about housing.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
But man, one of the things that I think gets
overlooked is cops.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Tourists place a big demand on cops, sometimes because they
need help and sometimes because they get their drunk asses arrested.
I mean, I mean there's a big cost. I mean,
as the head of the Christian Service Center always says,
if you've met a tourist that came to Orlando for
three days and didn't flush his toilet, in other words,
use our water, I'd.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
Like to meet him or.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Are any of that stuff and It's so funny, this
whole paragraph dedicated to this firm, the Razorfish firm.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Oh yeah, yeah, so there's a And that's another thing
that has long bothered me.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
Some of them, and I.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Would think bothers, other CEOs, I would think they would
start to speak up. Some of the biggest checks and
contracts they have are for companies that aren't based anywhere
in Florida.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
They're based in New York. I think there was one
based in Wisconsin.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
We may love Wisconsin, but their base and if I
was trying to I would want you're telling me there's
no creative agency, there's no firm that can come up
with an ad campaign.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
And then the interesting thing is that we're not talking
about small dollars here. And this is this is right
from your column. It says the comptrollers check Registry shows
that Visit Orlando has cut monthly checks this year, ranging
from one hundred and seventy two thousand to one point
seventy five million to a New York based headquartered firm
(12:29):
called Razorfish, which I guess is basically an advertising firm
that comes up with concepts and ideas at which they
did this thing called Orlando's. But the fact is exactly
what you say. You're telling me in all of Orlando
and all of Florida, from Miami to Orlando to Tampa,
that we couldn't find a creative firm that could do
that work and keep that money in house.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Like you get, the base rate that I see this
firm getting from looking through two years of check registries
is two hundred and seventy thousand dollars a month.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
That's bananas.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
And I've seen monthly amen's as high as one point
seven and two million dollars a nine hundred thousand. In
other words, we're talking real money here and I but
there's it's always just viewed as this this agency has.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
Been viewed as untouchable.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
But I think one of the other things that really
started to rub some of the county commissioners the wrong way,
and God bless them for it, was visitor Lander was
spending money on lobbying, uh and basically lobbying for their
own agency, saying we deserve more money.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
That's if you think about how meta and.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
How nuts that is for taxpayers to give money to
an agency to lobby for more tax dollars.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
Oh yeah, that's everything that's wrong with government.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Right right, right right? That is a core bad value.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
And by the way, the other the other they.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
Stay focused on the mission.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
I think they need to have their private interests donating more.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
I think I mean Disney.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
They do things like putting many Mouse's face on a
bus in Times Square. There's one company that's benefiting from
something like that, that's Disney, and Disney should probably be
the one paying for it, and mine mine. So anyway,
the comptroller, his name is Phil Diamond. He seems to
be taking this real serious. And to give a shout
out to two of the commissioners, Maira Uribe and Kelly Simrad.
(14:11):
They put out a long memo and they sound like
they're not going to be compromising.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
This is all going to come to a head in
a few weeks.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
And not to mention some of the other incitious stuff
that happens, and this happens in Florida a lot from
our own government to agencies of this nature. Are these
no big contracts man? That is that is like, that's
such shaky business when you just you know, you you
have a massive contract, maybe a ten million dollar contract
for a service or a product, and you don't even
bid it out, and of course it winds up into
(14:37):
some brother in law's company. It's just it's so sketch.
Calliga yeah, yeah, you know that.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
You're you're both right.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
And I got to tell you, if I I mean
trends and government EBB and flow, and if I had
to look at the most devious trend that I've seen
in Florida over the last two years, it is this
no big contract thing. And if any and if your
listeners aren't appreciating, I think they would appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (14:59):
I mean, and if most people, if you need to
get a new roof, you.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Don't just call one roofer and ask them how much
it's gonna cost and then go, here's all my money.
You call three roofers and you see what they're gonna do,
and you check their experience, you check what kind of
track record they're doing. Anytime you see a no big
contract that should end up a bright red flag. Often
we've seen, as Jack mentioned with Alligator Alley, there's political
cronies involved.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
Man. I saw one that steam my clams last week.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
So Florida is going after professors for their Charlie kirk
Kirk posts, Okay, fine, that's what they want to do.
But there's a contract to a law firm that is
getting nine hundred and twenty five dollars an hour an
hour to go after the college professors who are posting
about Charlie.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Kirk, and they're gonna lose, right, I mean, those are
First Amendment protected, well other than the if it's a
government agency, they would have to lose. Right.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
Well, it's murky.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
It's a little murky most of their no bid long
because I mean, you know what, an employer has a
right to fire someone for doing something that's you know,
that reflects poorly on the organization.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
Uh, but I think that's.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
A really wide swath, and courts are really reluctant to
step on to say that that that it's obscene speech, sure.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Yeah, almost or vile speech. Almost every one of these
cases I've read about is being challenged in court. I mean,
like nobody's just taking going like nobody's just going, okay, well,
I guess I'll just screwed up. Nobody's doing that.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
And most of and for and the free speech ones
are the ones they keep losing, Like the ones like
stop woke, where they were trying to tell private companies.
You can't have employee training lessons where you tell your
you know, uh employers, well you've never been a black person,
so you might need to uh consider what it's like
to walk in their shoes. Well, Ron DeSantis and James
Uthmeier may not may not like that as a lesson
(16:51):
to employers. But if I if I created ABC Incorporated Contracting,
and I'm spending my own money, and I want to
tell my own employers that because I think it's gonna
help boost my you know, multicultural business.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
That's my own business. And every court has said, who
the hell do you think you are?
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Yeah, yeah, who as a state to try to tell
businesses that they can't do what they want.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
No different than the guy who rolled through his warehouse
a few years back and said, if you don't vote
for this particularly candidate, I don't. I'm not. I can't
guarantee your employment. I mean you you just can't do
stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
No, no, you can't.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
And you're speaking of which before we go off, have
you all talked about uh, you know, do you remember
one of the most famous people in town who did that.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
They basically said, if you, uh, if you don't vote.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
For my guy, you're gonna lose your job or I'm
gonna close down my company and leave Town resorts.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Yeah there, yeah, bing bing, bing all the way around.
It's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Did you see that that Broadway musical starring Kristin Chineworth
is on Broadway now?
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah? Yeah, Savannah and uh Jackie actually just came back
from New York. I think either yesterday the day before, because.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Savannah to admit, I'm curious to see it.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Savannah was up there. It was interesting because today Matthew
Palm uh did a a review of it, and the
review was, look, they made a Broadway They made a
Broadway show about Jackie Siegel. That was pretty much the thing.
I mean, nothing was written about it. Nothing. He just
said that it was that it existed.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
He said, there's some people that have given it surprisingly
good reviews, and a whole lot of people have been
like WTL.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Well, god bless her. I guess always good seeing you, Scott.
We're so late. You do this to us every single time,
Scott Scott, Scott Scott's.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Sketts minutes from me next week?
Speaker 2 (18:29):
All right, no, I will not do that. Good laugh
for Scotty. There you go. Yeah, good seeing you, buddy,
I was always you got man all right for our
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