Governor wants tourism head to quit over rapper kerfuffle
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Gov. Rick Scott said Friday he wants the head of the state’s tourism marketing agency to step down after it refused to publicly disclose it paid rapper Pitbull $1 million to promote the state.
Scott is also asking Visit Florida to begin publishing its spending, contracts, salaries, audits and other financial information.
“The notion that Visit Florida spending would not be transparent to the taxpayers is just ridiculous. We must have major reforms at Visit Florida in the weeks ahead that require new leadership,” Scott said in a letter to William Talbert, who chairs the agencies board of directors.
The letter comes one day after Pitbull, whose real name is Armando Christian Perez, used Twitter to make his contract with Visit Florida public. House Speaker Richard Corcoran had sued two days earlier to have the contract released. Visit Florida had refused to disclose it, citing trade secrets.