Jay Galbraith News Today

Everyone knows tourism put Orlando on the map. What most people have also come to realize, though, is that this community — any community — needs more than just tourism to thrive economically. This is a pretty widely accepted principle, especially in a place like Central Florida that routinely ranks dead last among major metros when it comes to median wages. Yet for most of Orlando’s ...

The citizens panel assembled to screen funding requests for future tourist-tax revenue will meet Monday for a final time to take up issues Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings believes they shouldn’t. Some task force members want to explore how the county might spend tourist-tax millions not just to expand the Orange County Convention Center, fund ad campaigns to lure visitors to theme parks or ...

The Orange County Tourist Development Tax Citizen Advisory Task Force will gather on Monday to finalize their recommendations for local groups.

I rarely recommend people watch government meetings — unless maybe they have insomnia or a fondness for self-flagellation. But if you want to understand how feverishly the tourism lobby in this community works to keep a stranglehold on politics and politicians in Central Florida, I have one for you to watch. It was the second-to-last meeting of Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings’ task force on ...

A former Orlando Sentinel columnist resigned from a mayoral advisory panel studying possible uses for uncommitted tourist tax millions, saying “the deck seems stacked” to expand the Convention Center again. “Since the committee began, the [Convention Center] has had an outsized presence, both in presentations and marketing materials. We also have been told, time and again, about its economic ...

Coffee is for closers. So is Sunburn, your morning rundown of Florida politics.