After misclassifying more than $10 million in Tourist Development Tax funds, Visit Orlando has entered into an amended agreement with Orange County.
Tourist Development Tax is collected from hotel stays and short-term rentals in the county.
The agreement approved by the County Commission Tuesday followed a scathing audit last summer by the Comptroller's Office.
"Not to put too fine a point on it," Comptroller Phil Diamond said Tuesday, "but by reclassifying funds from their private accounts to public accounts means that taxpayers get transparency, they get accountability."
Those reclassified funds amounted to more than $11.6 million, according to the county presentation.
Comptroller Phil Diamond said that, while his office didn't find fraud, "We found misclassifications of money. We found expenditures we didn't agree with. We found expenditures that we didn't think qualified to be made under the Florida law governing tourism promotion expenditures."
The amended tourism promotion agreement, which runs through September 2028, ratifies changes to policies and bookkeeping rules to address the mislabeling of public funds by the nonprofit tourism agency.
The changes also address the way return on investment is calculated, along with county approval for lobbying by Visit Orlando, and the use of public money to cover private overhead costs.
Several business leaders spoke in support of Visit Orlando.
County commissioners emphasized that this agreement wasn't about the value of Visit Orlando's tourism promotion -- or potential other uses of TDT funds -- but about transparency and the correct use of tax dollars.
"We know how important tourism is to Central Florida," Commissioner Mayra Uribe said. "But that's not the question here. That's not the question. No one's looking to cut you. No one's looking to cancel you. ... What's our job is to keep a watchful eye on tax dollars. That's it."
The commission voted 5-2 in favor of the amended agreement. Uribe and Commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad voted against it amid several concerns, especially about a lack of time to review the final contract.
