>>Thi week on NewsNight, Mayor Demings denies Orange County is hiding information from the state's DOGE team as county employees receive subpoenas from investigators.

Plus, what might happen next in the fight over art on Florida's public roadways.

NewsNight starts now.

[MUSIC] Hello, I'm Steve Mort, welcome to NewsNight, where we take an in-depth look at the top stories and issues in Central Florida and how they shape our community.

First, tonight, the state's probe of spending in Orange County and other local governments around the state.

The DeSantis administration's DOGE team alleges an effort to obstruct its investigators looking into the county's finances, including spending on diversity equity and inclusion programs.

It's issued a sweeping set of state subpoenas to 16 county employees, demanding emails and documents tied to several nonprofit grant programs.

State officials alleged missing files and altered records.

Florida's chief financial officer, Blaise Ingoglia, says his team is probing possible misuse of taxpayer funds and irregularities in county records.

>>We accumulated about 1.2 million emails of everything related t diversity, equity and inclusion.

Now, there were six grants that were given out for DEI programs.

When we started searching the 1.2 million, five of those grants were not alluded to in any of those emails.

So I wonde what happened with those emails.

So it's telling me that it is probable, that we did have county employees try to hide some of this information.

Now, I'm probably freaking out a lot of Orange County employees right now.

My advice to you is when you are contacted and when you are going to be interviewed, do not hide the information.

Be truthful with them.

We know that people above you told you to go and change the information in an effort to try to hide the information from us.

Don't lie to us because if we have to, we will bring in FDLE and, digital forensic units to find out exactly who did what.

>>Meanwhile, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings insist the county is cooperating fully and that no employees have been instructed to alter, change or delete any documents.

In a statement, the mayor says the state has offered no evidence to support its allegation that we were hiding information or acting without integrity.

We welcome the opportunity for full public transparency on this issue.

>>All right.

Well, let's bring in our panel now to break it all down.

And joining us in the studio this week.

Ryan Gillespie writes about local government for the Orlando Sentinel.

Thanks for coming in, Ryan.

>>Good to see you.

>>Good to see you.

It's been a long time.

Gabrielle Russon, now writing for Florida Politics on the regular.

You also write a little bit for the Winter Park Voice.

>>Yep, freelancin and covering the Orange County.

>>Good to see you, Gabrielle.

Thanks so much for coming in.

And Brendan Byrne, assistant news director at Central Florida Public Media.

Good to see you, Brendan.

>>Good to be here.

>>Thanks so much for coming in, guys.

Appreciate it.

Brendan, let me start with you.

Central Florida Public Media has been across this story.

Just outline what the state is is asking for in these subpoenas and what's included.

>>Yeah.

Simply put, the state once these computer files related to the counties DE efforts, climate initiatives and other and they specifically outline, six organizations that these records pertain to.

These are organizations that service the black and LGBTQ plus residents, largely.

And they also want files of, of, of log deletions.

You know, because as we saw, you know, the CFO is alleging that that the county employees had - had covered this up.

And, and and we saw that Mayor Demings has denied that the county has done any wrongdoing.

But that's essentially what they're looking for with these subpoenas.

>>Yeah.

You've reported on this with your, colleague, Steve Hudak who covers a lot of Orange County government, Ryan.

I mean, what's the the crux of the state's problem with the county's finances?

What is Blaise Ingoglia talking about?

>>So what's interesting is their issues aren't actually unique to Orange County, because it's basically the same story for every local government in Florida is budgets have balloone over the last five or so years because their budgets are funde by property taxes and property taxes.

Collection or property tax collections are determined by property values.

So we've all seen how housing prices spike in the last five years.

And so even in places like orange County, which hasn't raised their property tax rate since 2008, their budget has gone up $1.7 billion and property tax collections are up 40% over five years.

And their position at the state level is that government shouldn't be increasing their budgets.

They should be cutting taxes and cutting budgets even, even as population grows.

>>And of course, the governor has spearheaded this effort to try to get property tax eliminated altogether.

You've been covering this story for for Florida politics, Gabrielle, including Mayor Demings' reaction.

He's sort of subsequently expanded on that statement that, that I just read there.

What have we heard from county leaders?

And do we know how they plan to move forward now?

>>Sure.

Well, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings had some really strong words.

And he said what the state is doing.

You know, he said it' a politically motivated attack.

And, you know Demings is a Democrat.

Orange is blue.

Florida is growing mor and more red.

You know, Demings said, quote, this community is a target.

But Demings also said, you know, he's not going to defy the subpoena.

She's going to give the state what they're asking.

You know Demings is a former police chief and a former county sheriff.

And he said, you know, the state's investigation is tainted.

You know, they're trying to, intimidate witnesses and having a press conference to announce an investigation.

You know, they're not going in this, you know, looking at the facts and looking at the evidence to see where it takes.

>>It does seem like there' a more adversarial relationship between some of these blue areas of the state and the state as a whole.

I mean, they're operating in a different environment now than they used be.

>>Sure and just a couple of weeks ago.

You know, the state threatened to remove Demings and the county board from office when they were fighting over that ICE contract.

So there are definitely high tensions between Orange County in the state.

>>I mean, Mayor Demings, as Gabrielle says, says he suspects that politics are behind this decision to look into to Orange County.

But, you know, the Republican run governments in Florida are also being targeted, too.

>>Some of them, yeah, the the DOGE effort, they're looking at, Manatee County, which is a red county.

There's kind of some other politics at play there over some positions, local governments taken there in terms of, development and sprawl, kind of in some ways simila to what we see in Orange County.

But, you know, when Mayor Demings says he thinks politics are at play, I have to imagine some of that is he sees the cit of Orlando receiving an audit.

They haven't raised taxes or property tax collections in more than a decade.

Orange County hasn't since 2008, but he looks at his neighbor to the north, Seminole County, which is a red county.

All Republicans on that county commission who voted all of a month ago to raise their property tax rate as well as their gas tax, and then-- >>They're going the opposite direction.

>>Exactly They're actively raising taxes.

And then there are ten other, at least ten other cities across Central Florida, predominantly in red areas, mind you, in Lake Count and red parts of Orange County in West Orange and as well as Seminole, that are also looking at raising taxes.

And none of those cities have gotten a DOGE letter, whereas Orange County has.

>>An I think it's worth pointing out, like with Orange County, I mean, this is a multi-billion dollar what is it, $9 billion annual budget.

And DOGE is looking at six contracts, six grants.

So it's a very-- >>Worth a few hundred grand.

>>Yeah.

So that's kind of important context of how big these budgets are and what DOGE is kind of targeting and pointing out at these press conferences.

>>Yeah, the budget is, is the budgets of the counties in Florida, which are large counties, a substantial as you say.

It's also worth noting that Blaise Ingoglia just recently announced his candidac to take the take on the CFO role full time.

I guess he'll run in 2026.

So, I mean, clearly, if he succeeds in that, this is the kind of thing that we can expect to see going forward.

>>And he's really arguing, you know, I'm doing this for the taxpayers.

That's why I'm doing this.

That's what he would say.

>>Yeah, yeah, well be sure t find us on social media as well.

We're at WUCF TV on Facebook and Instagram and also find us on X @NewsNightWUCF.

We always like to hear from you.

>>Meanwhile, Orang County itself recently completed an audit.

It's been looking into the books at Visit Orlando.

That's the regional tourism promotion agency, to see how it's using tourist development tax dollars collected by the county.

Visit Orlando has a 2019 tourism promotion agreement with Orange County, and gets about $100 million of TDT funding a year.

In its review, focused on 2023 the comptroller's office found what it believes to be questionable spending and multiple compliance issue in the handling of public money.

At a recent Orange County Commission meeting, board members grille Visit Orlando about the findings and an estimate from the comptroller's office that the agency may have misclassified nearly $20 million in TDT revenue as private money, prompting commissioners to call for a refund.

>>I absolutely think it's our responsibility to get the taxpayer money back and to comply and get this contract completely compliant and not negotiate a contract that was agreed upon.

We should enforce it, and I hope this boar will take that courageous effort and do right by the taxpayers of Orange County who came up here, and all the ones tha came up here to defend tourism.

We will defend it with you, but we will defend it transparently, correctly and abiding and get taxpayer money back.

>>In the report there was not an area that said misuse and every dolla it was accounted for in our practice and will continue.

I went through pretty much every detail of our response in the audit, and in most cases, we've already taken action and or were in the process of taking action.

>>It's worth noting that the $20 million estimate is a larger number than the number given in the audit, which only covered the 2023 calendar year.

Gabrielle, let me come to you first on this.

You covered that meeting.

Just outline what the audit found in terms of compliance and alleged, you know, questionable spending, I guess, and what commissioners see most concerned about.

>>Sure.

You know, it's a really long audit.

So there are a lot of issue raised and allegations raised.

One finding from the audit was, Visit Orlando inappropriately used, $12,000 in public money to pay for its executives car allowance.

There was a party in New York City that cost $75,000 a michelin event.

The audit, another finding was, $20,000 spent on two Ki skyboxes during March Madness.

During the county meeting, some commissioners voiced concerns about Visit Orlando spending $100,000 on a lobbyist and event in Tallahassee during committee week, saying, you know, Visit Orlando shouldn't be spending money to lobby and try and influence, but, you know, Visit Orlando got an opportunity to defend itself, like for the Michelin event, you know, Visit Orlando said, you know, that help get national media attention on Orlando.

And, you know, we're doing our job that got a lot of big media to to mention Orlando restaurants and our food scene.

>>Some of the concerns seem to be that, you know, this contrac dates bait dates back to 2019.

This audit was for 2023.

So maybe we should be looking at the the numbers in the intervening years.

>>And $20 million, that's a lot of money.

Some commissioners raised concerns.

You know, we could b we need to get that money back.

We could spend that money to help local art organizations or pay off our debt.

20 million is a lot of money.

But you know, not all commissioners were fired up about the audit.

You know, some said, you know, this is an issue that county staff and county attorneys can work with Visit Orlando, you know, we'll sort this out.

So there was kind of a range of emotions from the county board meeting on this audit.

>>Yeah, you guys, Central Florida Public Media have been covering this as well.

Do we know what happens next?

>>They basically push back any action.

So, I think it's still about December.

But but, Mayor Demings really wanted the commission to have time to kind of wrap their heads around this audit.

As Gabrielle mentioned there's there's a lot in this.

It's a lot of money.

They want to make sure they had appropriate time to go through it because some of the actions could be, you know, changing the contracts or pulling contracts or even forcing Visit Orlando to pay that money back.

So, I mean, there's there's some, you know, pretty large consequences to what could happen.

They're they're waiting and doing their homework before they take any action later this year.

>>I did want to ask you, Gabrielle, about a little side story at this hearing.

Visit Orlando actually showed footage from a Today show filming, in Winter Park.

That's the NBC morning show that sparked intense controversy right back in May.

When that aired.

You wrote a piece for the Winter Park Voice on this.

What was the complaint from Winter Park officials?

>>Yeah, Beth Kassab from Winter Park Voices has really led this story.

You know, when they were defending when Visit Orlando was defending itself from the audit, they played this clip of the today show in town for Epic Universe's grand opening.

Al Roker's there, and everyone's talking about how great Orlando is.

Or, you know, there's more to do than just the theme parks.

And if you're local, I you'll watch the Today show segment and you'll recognize the train station-- >>Central Park.

>>And Winter Park, the cute downtown scene in the park.

And it's very lovely there.

You know, locals will know where it is, but the millions of people watching the today show probably wouldn't know where it is, because nobody mentioned that it was in Winter Park.

>>It was branded as Orlando.

>>Yeah, it was branded as Orlando and that really ticke Winter Park city officials off.

Yeah.

And said, you know, I think they gave the park for free to Visit Orlando.

They rented it for free, waive the fees.

And they said, you know we don't want to do that again unless we make sure we get our shout out.

>>But it was interesting that there was a controversy about it.

And then they showed it a the Orange County-- >>Meeting.

>>Orange County commission-- >>And no one mentioned, you know, that have this this would really annoy this.

This clip really annoyed Winter Park.

No one mentioned that at the county.

>>No.

I mean, questions about how Visit Orlando spends its money though, right.

Right, are not particularly new I mean, the Sentinel has covered this over several years.

>>Yes.

And really, this whole conversatio is framed by the whole premise of the tourist development tax, which Gabby mentioned.

Basically, the way that tax is spent is limited to, you know, tourism, marketin and things that promote tourism.

So you see, it spent a lot on like expansions of the convention center, or it helped build the Doctor Phillips Center or the Kia Cente and some other venues like that.

But as we've seen, housing costs go up and this region's got its, it struggles with homelessness and affordable housing, and infrastructure costs and law enforcement costs and all kinds of other things.

There's some local officials on that county commission who would love to be able to spend this huge sum of money on at least some of those issues maybe as well as Visit Orlando.

And to do that, you would probably need to look at how much you were spending on Visit Orlando.

>>Well, let's talk a little bit more about TDT dollars and how they should be used, and whether the amount being spent on Visi Orlando should be cut to fund other local priorities like housing and transportation.

That came up during the Board of Count Commissioners meeting, as well.

>>Fo the protection of our industry and for the protectio of our local economy.

Visit Orland absolutely has a purpose, and nobody here thinks that it doesn't.

The question become is is it a $115 million purpose?

And so when you hear the good things that Visit Orlando does and how it gives back to the community, but you also hear, you know, 25% of the public saying, hey, we need some additional help with our community and we wan to see diversification of that.

I think that there is a common ground between industry and the public.

>>That's Commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad.

Gabrielle, Visit Orlando is definitely used to making a case for itself.

Right.

And it's sort of a valuable tourism promotion, tool.

And in fact, it says the industry itself continues to go gangbusters in Central Florida.

Right.

What are the most recent numbers, say, from Visit Orlando?

>>Well, Visit Orlando recently commissione and an economic impact survey, a study.

And, you know they said that they had record breaking tourism was a recor breaking year in Orlando, $94.5 billion in economic impact in 2024.

So we had 75 million people visit Orlando last year and direct spend, direct visitor spending 5%, according to Visitor Orlando study.

To put that in perspective, the the economic impact is equivalent of hosting the Super Bowl twic a year, twice a week for a year.

That's pretty huge.

You know, and then that's indirect and direc benefits to our community from, you know, helping tourism help the supply chain construction.

Financial services and indirect jobs at the parks and restaurants and hotels.

37% of our economy in the region is tied directly to tourism.

>>It is a huge industry, isn't it?

>>An so Visit Orlando says, you know, we play a big role in helping grow our tourism.

And you got to think, you know, you don't forget in 2020 tourism was an economic crisis with the pandemic shutdowns and Visit Orlando has helped promote and grow to get the tourists coming back.

So now we're having record breaking numbers several years later.

But I wonder whether we kno how the public feels about it.

Where does the public stand on sort of more diversified TDT use?

>>Well, Florida, Florida politics had a story come out last month.

There was a new survey by Hill Research that found that 79% of Orange County voters support TDT.

And this was similar to another poll from July that had similar results from the Florida Center for Political Strategy that, you know, there was support.

There were support across party lines for TDT.

But if you ask people you know, yes, average person, do you want to spen $100 million on Visit Orlando, or would you like to be able to ride the SunRai to go to the airport, you know?

>>Yeah.

>>And there's also a push from people wanting some reforms.

Yeah.

The Orlando Business Journal had a story recently saying that the Rosen Hotel CEO, Frank Santos, wanted to increase the TDT tax from 6% to 10%.

You know, there's enough money to go around, especially if we raise that tax and, you know, at least one county commissioner has supported that as well.

>>And and, Steve, just the just to bring everything that we've talked about so far today together, when we go back to the DOGE stuff, a lot of these local budgets are strange because of law enforcement costs.

And so if we think about wha what do 70 was the $75 million, is that what you said?

75 million, yeah.

>>It's it's those 75 million people.

You gott you gotta have law enforcement to protect them and things like that.

And this is money that by law cannot be spent on those type of needs.

So that's a lot of the push that we're seeing is these tourists, they do great things for the economy, but they also flush our toilets.

They also, stay in our hotels.

They also use our roads.

They require law enforcement.

So so that that's really the push and pull of this whole thing.

>>Well, it' an interesting topic and we'll we'll see how it plays ou in the coming weeks and months.

Well, Gabrielle does a lot of reporting on the tourism industry in Central Florida.

She has a story out this week in Florida Politics on the challenges of extreme heat at Disney World and other major theme parks.

We've put a link up to that o our website to that reporting.

It's wucf.org/newsnight.

Okay, finally tonigh let's stay with local government and its relationship with the state.

We wanted to get an update on protests against the decision by the Florida Department of Transportation to paint over the rainbow crosswalk at Pulse.

Several people have bee arrested since the state put up signs warning protester who've been using chalk to color in the crosswalk, not to deface the roadway, sidewalk or impede traffic.

But when we visited on Wednesday, chalk was still being used to draw on the sidewalk on either side of the street near the memorial.

The crosswalk itself remaine clear of color as FHP troopers continue to watch over the site.

The governor has addressed the issue several times at an appearance in Orlando this week, he was asked about the recent arrests.

>>You don't have a First Amendment right to commandeer someone else's property.

You have a First Amendment right to paint your own property, and knock yourself ou if that's what you want to do.

But when you have a state, a crosswalk, or a state road.

The law in the state of Florida is now that that there's not markings or there's that's not going to be used for those purposes.

>>Since the arrests, protesters have taken their grievances and chalk to the sidewalk outside City Hall.

FDOT says its new manual requires roadway art of any kind to be removed statewide.

All right.

Well, let's tal about the latest on this story.

I'll start with you, Ryan.

The city is in the process of removing crosswalks throughout the city.

Pavers and other art workers as well, from roadways.

Is it still asking the state for an exception, though?

On on the Pulse site?

>>Yeah, it is.

And actually, we can just definitively say they're actually done in covering up the 14 crosswalks.

>>Okay.

>>We'r filming this on September 4th, and this was the deadline.

And they told me this morning that they are done.

But yeah, they are stil seeking an exception for Pulse.

As far as I know, that's just kind of an administrative process.

There's not going to b a hearing or anything like that.

But Mayor Buddy Dye sent a letter to FDOT last week making the case that this i something that is a tribute to to the victims of the Pulse shooting.

It's also been in safety enhancements or with with some data backing that that also was approved by FDOT.

And he basically just mad the ask.

And it's u to FDOT to say yes or no.

Certainly publicly they have postured tha they don't think they're going to b making exceptions for anybody.

So so we'll wait and see.

>>Well, you've been writing about this too.

Gabrielle.

I mean, there seems to be some pushback, in fact on on that claim by the governor that the law he signed early this year actually requires street art.

>>Yeah.

And governor DeSantis has been saying, you know, no one's allowed to commandeer the roads.

And he's citing a new state law.

But it's a little bit more complicated than that.

It's the bill was a really long bill, but it doesn't actually mention specifically street art.

There's a bunch of provision in it, and one of them is, effort can withhold mone for road projects if, local government doesn't, yo know, comply with, with orders.

So but it doesn't actually say, you know, no, no street art allowed on crosswalks.

And when, there was debate on this bill during the legislature, you know, this issue about the crosswalks wasn't debated or discussed or brought up, and even Democrats voted in favor of the bill.

>>Yeah, even the Republican on the committee, there's a committee chairman said that like, none of this was was brought up.

>>Well, as we heard just now, the governor's defended those arrests, right, of Pulse protesters this week.

What do we kno about those cases specifically?

>>So so there were several people that were arrested over the weekend.

They were all released.

And it is now in the hands o orange Osceola, State Attorney Monique Warrell.

If she's going to file charges.

She has said that she's going to review these case with fairness and transparency.

Those comments came after DeSantis, made the statement that it is in her hands and she's going to make this political.

We know the two of the have had a history before, but, essentially it's in the hands of the State Attorney's office now to see what will happen.

>>Yeah, it'll be interesting to see if that does tee up a clash.

Orlando maintain that these multicolored street art installations actually improved safety.

I mean, what evidence do they have of that?

>>Yeah, it's kind of remarkable to think about, because I wrote about this 3 or 4 years ago, and they were telling me this and I hadn't seen them in person.

And, you know, I was very skeptical, but there's national studies that certainly point to that.

You know, in Tallahassee they put them in school zones, and they have dat that shows drivers drive slower, they yield to pedestrians at higher rates.

There's other studies around the country that show that.

But specifically in Orlando, you know, the Pulse rainbow, for instance.

That was the first one painted over.

It's on a really busy stretch of Orange Avenue.

It gets something like 35,000 cars per day.

It was installed in 2017.

There have been four crashes since then, and then the ones downtown are more recent in the last couple of years.

But, the city has data that they were taking that shows usage of the crosswalks tripled, which is a big deal.

And pedestrian safety peopl actually want to cross at these, crosswalks.

They see them, they use them.

And also, conflicts wit cars in that time are down 65%.

So drivers are also driving slower, better stopping at crosswalks yielding to pedestrians.

This was such successful program at a low cost that the city was looking to expand this.

There was about 28 others that they were looking at to do in the coming years.

And when you talk about improving pedestrian safety, if you touch a road basically like you're into millions of millions of dollar of spending to put in, you know, any kind of improvement.

And, doing thi for tens of thousands of dollars is, a much cheaper alternative.

>>Really interesting data.

Well, talking about, spending, it seems that the Sentinel's having some trouble getting data on how much this is all costing to remove the street art.

>>Yeah.

So, we put in public records, request FDOT for all kinds of things.

For one, we wanted to know, who who made this decision?

Why was this decision made?

Was there any data behind this decision?

Because I've only seen studies that say this is a generally a safety initiative, that this works.

We've asked DOT both Florida Department of Transportation, the US Department of Transportation and the governor's office to supply us with any data or studies that would show the contrary, and they've refused to do so.

And then we've got a bunch of records requests that are pending.

Now, we haven't received, an acknowledgment, at least as we sit today.

And so we are still pursuing those records.

>>But it has been a pattern as you talk to journalists, that this administration has been quite slow on public records requests.

We put a link to that la that the governor cites on our website to read for yoursel wucf.org/newsnight, but that is all the time we have for this week.

My thanks to Ryan Gillespie, Gabriele Russon and and Brendan Byrne.

Thank you so much for coming in guys.

Really appreciate it.

Good conversation today.

We'll see you next Friday night at 8:30 here on WUCF.

From all of us here at NewsNight.

Take care and have a great week.