Originally published Dec. 19, 2019
By Jason Garcia and Stephen Hudak
Moments before they voted late Tuesday night to give $125 million to Universal Orlando to help pay for a new road, some Orange County commissioners and staffers suggested their options were limited.
Commissioners had just listened to testimony from some hourly workers in the tourism industry who pleaded with them to spend the money on broader community needs -- like the region’s affordable housing crisis.
“In this particular case, the monies that have been allocated for this are specifically earmarked for transportation and not other worthy causes -- not to diminish those causes at all,” said Commissioner Betsy VanderLey, just before voting in favor of the Universal deal.
VanderLey was referring to the fact that most of the money for the Universal deal will come out of an obscure taxing district covering the International Drive tourist corridor. And the message to people in the audience -- which was also echoed by Commissioner Christine Moore -- was that even if commissioners wanted to spend money from that district on other important causes, they could not.
Only, it turns out, they could.
“We were not briefed on that,” VanderLey said Wednesday.
Read the rest of the story here.
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