Commentary by Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida
Something important just happened in Tallahassee — and it didn’t come from City Hall or the County administration building.
It came from the private sector.
Greater Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce Chairman Eddie Gonzalez Loumiet made it clear Tuesday that the Chamber intends to step forward and take a more active role in recruiting companies and jobs to this community.
His reasoning, in a piece in The Tallahassee Democrat, was simple: Tallahassee needs a quarterback.
He’s right.
And the fact that he had to say it out loud tells you everything you need to know about where things stand.
Because for nearly a decade, the Tallahassee-Leon County Office of Economic Vitality — OEV — has been positioned as that quarterback. It was created to lead, coordinate, and deliver results.
Readers of Red Tape Florida know how that has worked out: Only one major success. A pipeline that rarely materializes into announcements. A local economy still heavily dependent on government and public-sector spending.
That’s not a talking point. That’s a pattern — one that Red Tape Florida has been documenting in detail, including a deeper look at OEV’s project pipeline and the gap between activity and actual outcomes.
And now, the private sector is responding accordingly.
Eddie Gonzalez Loumiet didn’t hedge around that reality. He stepped into it and said what others have been unwilling to say plainly: the current structure is not producing what this community needs.
That’s leadership.
What we’re seeing from local government, by contrast, is something else entirely.
Take City Manager Reese Goad’s response.
According to reporting, Goad suggested that OEV remains “perfectly situated” to lead recruitment efforts and emphasized that the existing structure is essentially the right one.
That’s beyond tone deaf – it’s hallucinatory. As Red Tape Florida has documented, Leon County has one – ONE — out-of-market win in OEV’s entire existence. That was an Amazon distribution center that multiple people close to the project said had absolutely nothing to do with OEV efforts.
If the system were working, the Chamber wouldn’t feel compelled to step in and “run point.” If the system were working, we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all.
A broader issue
Tallahassee leaders don’t like to talk about problems.
OEV’s incredibly poor track record ought to be a major topic of conversation at city and county commission meetings.
Instead, crickets.
Tallahassee-Leon leaders are so busy giving themselves awards, touting obscure rankings and starting Facebook posts with “I’m honored to have been named ….” that nobody seems to make time to acknowledge clearly failing vital institutions.
And it doesn’t stop at economic development.
Silence as far as the ear can hear
We’ve seen the same pattern play out in smaller, more contained situations — where the stakes are lower, but the signals are just as clear.
Take Midtown Reader.
A small business was pushed through a costly and time-consuming process that resulted in the loss of usable parking and the installation of infrastructure with little practical value. The story reached tens of thousands of readers. The public outcry was overwhelming.
And the City of Tallahassee’s response?
Nothing.
No engagement. No correction. No acknowledgment.
Nothing from the city commission dais.
A functional city government would have read the series and immediately taken steps to make things right – to convert the grassy plot into badly-needed parking.
Not here. We don’t do that.
Red Tape Florida and other residents have suggested improvement to the Tallahassee airport. They may not have all been good ideas, but they were all met with stony silence. Meanwhile, TLH has fewer air travelers today than in 1988.
Then there is the CEO who told Red Tape Florida about how he eventually gave up on locating in Tallahassee, even though it was his first choice, because of a lack of responsiveness by OEV.
The ultimate irony is that the City also goes silent when contacted by email by builders and tradespeople, knowing that their often-outrageous demands will be subject to public records law. That clear evasion of the spirit of the state public records law should have drawn the immediate attention of city commissioners.
That silence matters.
Because if the system cannot respond to a clear, visible, fixable problem affecting a single small business, it raises serious questions about its ability to respond to larger, more complex challenges.
That’s the through line.
Whether it’s OEV’s underwhelming track record on major recruitment, permitting friction that slows down investment, or small-business impacts like Midtown Reader, the pattern is consistent: problems surface, evidence builds, and the response from those in charge is delayed, diluted — or nonexistent.
The Chamber’s move cuts directly against that pattern.
It says: stop waiting, start acting.
It says: results matter more than structure.
And it says, implicitly but unmistakably, that the current approach isn’t getting it done.
That’s why Eddie Gonzalez Loumiet’s comments matter. Not just because of what he said — but because of what they reveal.
Leadership isn’t maintaining a structure that isn’t producing results. Leadership is recognizing that reality and stepping forward anyway.
Tallahassee doesn’t just need a quarterback for recruiting companies.
It needs a system — across the board — that is responsive, accountable, and willing to engage when something clearly isn’t working.
Right now, the private sector is showing what that looks like.
The question is whether anyone else is willing to follow.