Use hotel taxes where needed — not just to lure tourists

Watching the fight between the convention center and Florida Citrus Bowl is like watching Animal Planet, where ravenous beasts battle over a wounded elk.

On one side is the convention crowd — hoteliers and tourism execs who've already built one of the largest buildings in America at 7 million square feet. They've devoured nearly $2 billion in tax money …but are still hungry for more.

On the other side are the green jackets — the Citrus Bowl guys who hand out signature green blazers to insiders who pledge blood loyalty to this not-so-modern-day coliseum. It matters not to them that this football stadium no longer has a tenant. They, too, crave tax dollars to gild their team-less stadium.

So the green jackets and conventioneers warily eye one another as they stalk the prey they both desire — your money.

It is a gigantic pot of hotel taxes — more than $160 million a year that visitors and local staycation-takers leave behind in the form of a 6 percent tax on hotel rooms.

The prey stands no chance. It will be devoured.

For it is guarded by no one.

Sure, Orange County commissioners control the pot.

But they have never treated this cash like real money. Instead it is play money, meant to build big things. To keep the green jackets and tourism bosses fat and happy.

Whenever true needs arise in this community — be they cops, bus routes or parks — the commissioners simply say: "Sorry, this money isn't for you."

It is time to change that.

You see, right now, Florida law says hotel taxes can be spent only on things that help fill more hotel rooms — things like convention centers, entertainment venues and tourism marketing.

And so Orlando has lavished billions of tax dollars on those things, spending none of it on other things residents want and need.

Other communities do better by the people who live in the shadows of tourism.

In Nevada, for instance, hotel taxes are spent on schools and roads.

The logic is simple: "Tourists use our roads. They use our services. They should help pay for the problems."

Those are the words of one Las Vegas resident I met when I visited 10 years ago to learn more about how Vegas deals with the impact of tourism.

City leaders agreed, saying it makes little sense to keep pouring money into tourism while residents were suffering from crowded schools and clogged roads.

Most of you agreed. When the Sentinel conducted a poll around the same time, 70 percent of Central Floridians said they wanted to change state law to allow hotel taxes to be spent on things they truly needed.