Skip Foster, publisher of Red Tape Florida and president of Hammerhead Communications, addressed the Capital Tiger Bay Club Thursday with a blunt diagnosis of Tallahassee and Leon County’s economic condition. The speech argued that population, job, and sales numbers all point the same direction — down — and laid out a six-point prescription for reversing course. We’re publishing the full remarks below, word for word.
Good morning and I just want to say how great it is to be here.
Being asked to speak at the Capital Tiger Bay club is one of the highest honors anybody in our community can receive … in mid-June.
So hello and welcome to the capital of the third largest state in the union, the second-fastest growing state in the U.S. and the 15th largest economy in the world.
This is it – the center of government in a bustling, thriving state!
Or is it?
Today I’m going to offer you an assertion, the proof to back it up, some context, and then a prescription for change.
The assertion is this: Tallahassee and Leon County are – right now – in the midst of a serious period of economic distress that is decades in the making.
The Proof
Now, the stats.
Let’s start at the very most basic statistic – population growth.
Just a month or so ago the U.S. Census Bureau released new population information. It showed that in the 12 months ending last July, Leon County LOST population.
1,440 residents.
That’s the equivalent of all registered voters in the Betton Hills voting precinct leaving in a year.
The capital county of Florida is LOSING population. If you aren’t shocked by that, you should be.
Consider just one consequence. Leon County Schools are already fighting fierce headwinds from school choice, and the state funds districts largely on a per-student basis. If only a couple hundred of those 1,440 residents were school-age children—and that’s a reasonable estimate—that represents roughly $2 million in annual education funding disappearing with them.
This latest population drop fits with a years-long trend. Leon County’s population in 2010 was a little over 275,000. We still haven’t cracked 300,000. That’s .55 annual growth – anemic. Florida is growing 3 times faster than its capital county.
Job numbers are similar.
Leon County is losing jobs – the Florida Chamber says so and so does the Tallahassee-Leon Office of Economic Vitality’s OEV’s own web site.
In October of 2024, according to the OEV’s own data center, there were 163,592 jobs in Leon County. The latest reporting data – it’s down to 158,830. Almost 5,000 jobs have vanished in 18 months.
What about sales?
In January of 2025, Leon County posted $437 million in retail sales. 12 months later, Leon County posted $391.6 million in taxable sales. That’s down $46 million. Again, these are OEV numbers. And that’s a big loss during a time of high inflation when just selling the same amount of stuff should have led to higher dollars.
These are the three key legs of any community’s economic stool – employment, sales, population. All down.
“These are the three key legs of any community’s economic stool – employment, sales, population. All down.”
The reality of these numbers matches the truth on the ground.
OEV hasn’t announced a successful recruitment since 2024. According to its own records, the only out-of-market win in its 10-year history was Amazon – anybody that had anything to do with that project will tell you OEV had nothing do with Amazon choosing Tallahassee.
The other wins for OEV are relocating a local brewery and expansions of two existing businesses.
How is that possible?
Just between me being asked to write this speech and today, major new jobs projects were announced in Thomasville, Ga. and Bay County with over 100 new jobs each.
Leon hasn’t had a win like that in years.
***
Speaking of years, way back in 1994, then-Vice President Al Gore came to Tallahassee to celebrate the opening of the Mag Lab.
Let’s play a little Tiger Bay game.
Imagine it’s 1994. You’re sitting at your tables for a strategic planning retreat. The facilitator gives your table this assignment:
“What can Tallahassee do to ensure that as little economic development as possible is ever created around this one-of-a-kind national scientific asset?”
You could hardly do better than our community has while TRYING!
Thirty-two years later, the Mag Lab remains one of the most unique research facilities in the world. Yet the private-sector economic activity generated around it is astonishingly small.
Can you imagine what that asset would look like today if it had landed in Austin? Raleigh-Durham? Huntsville?
The failure to build a meaningful innovation economy around the Mag Lab is one of the greatest economic development underachievements in Florida history, much less Tallahassee.
“One of the greatest economic development underachievements in Florida history, much less Tallahassee.”
Now, the impacts of this flailing economy and scant economic development shouldn’t be surprising. One of them is crime.
The state stopped publishing municipal crime rankings a few years ago, which probably came as a relief to local leaders. From 2014 through 2018, Tallahassee repeatedly led Florida in violent crime. While things have improved, they remain troubling. Today Tallahassee’s violent crime rate is still roughly three times the state average.
Another byproduct is a frustrating situation with air travel.
Guess how far you can go back and find a year when TLH Intergalactic had the same number of passengers as it does today?
Here’s a hint: Puntrooski.
That’s right, 1988, the same year Leroy Butler raced down the sidelines in Death Valley.
TLH had 949k passengers in 1988 – OEV says in 2025 it was 902k.
In the same period, Jacksonville went from roughly 3 million passengers to 7.6 million
And none of us needed the national survey to tell us that TLH is one of the most expensive airports in America. Subsidies are being thrown at airlines every few years, but when the subsidy runs out, so does the new service. Red Tape Florida just published a story about how Breeze has dropped 18 routes in the last year and at least half of them were subsidized.
So … why? Why is it like this?
The Golf Analogy
Golf analogy time: For those of you who play, you know there are four major parts of the game: driving, iron play, short game and putting.
You can survive with one weakness.
Sometimes even two.
But if all four are out of sync, it’s time to flag down the beer cart.
Communities are the same way.
Tallahassee has four major power centers:
The private sector.
State government.
Local government.
Higher education.
If those four are rowing in the same direction, amazing things happen.
If they’re pulling against one another, stagnation is inevitable.
And in Tallahassee, they are almost never aligned.
The red “state” government doesn’t trust blue “local” government.
Our universities often pursue institutional priorities that don’t necessarily align with community priorities.
Local government has too often been mired in bureaucracy, ineffectiveness and even corruption.
And the private sector has largely failed to provide the leadership necessary to bring everyone together.
Now, if you think that’s too harsh, let’s look at the most important civic issue we’ve faced in years.
The proposed TMH-FSU partnership should have been a year-long celebration.
Think about it.
A major community hospital.
A major research university.
The capital city.
The capital county.
Every leg of the stool pointed in the same direction.
Instead, the TMH CEO found out about the possible sale of his hospital while attending a United Way board meeting.
“What should have been a model of collaboration became a case study in dysfunction.”
The city manager and mayor conducted secret discussions with FSU leadership.
Things got sideways with FAMU and TSC.
And the Chamber did what the Chamber does best. It sat that one out.
What should have been a model of collaboration became a case study in dysfunction.
Unfortunately, back to golf, that example is just par for the course for our community.
Local government leadership in our community has been obsessed with petty politics, devoid of a shared vision and unable to grasp the fundamental role government should play in building prosperity. The City of Tallahassee culture, in particular, is business unfriendly and driven by PR wins not on the ground accomplishment. To wit, the City devotes more than $1.5 million and 9 employees to its communications department alone.
“The City devotes more than $1.5 million and 9 employees to its communications department alone.”
Meanwhile, for the City, the first quarter of the 21st century has been marked by scandal, corruption and, with regards to economic development, apparent indifference.
The private sector leg of the stool has, sadly, also been rickety.
Tallahassee-Leon’s private sector has not done its job.
It has not articulated the benefits of growth. It has not cultivated a generation of business-savvy public sector leaders. And, perhaps most importantly, it has allowed a select few – whose businesses are intimately connected to local government – to, in effect, neuter the Chamber and other business organizations and abdicate their responsibilities to drive growth and vision and progress.
I want to make sure I’m not being ambiguous. Private sector companies in segments such as legal, lobbying, engineering, finance, real estate, development and many others have chosen control and influence over local government rather than cultivating a crop of visionary leaders who are beholden to what’s best for our community’s vitality rather than their own interests.
This has led to ineffective, tightly controlled governance, which has had the unintended consequence of allowing the anti-growth movement to flourish. It has fostered a regulatory environment that is widely known around the state and region as the most business-unfriendly around.
Tallahassee-Leon has a “closed for business” sign hanging around its neck and the statistics from the start of this speech are proof that this is real.
“Tallahassee-Leon has a “closed for business” sign hanging around its neck.”
How many of you read the Midtown Reader story in Red Tape Florida?
A local business – a BOOKSTORE – decided it wanted to expand. Local government should have come rushing in with flowers saying: “Oh my goodness, this is fantastic – HOW CAN WE HELP?”
Instead, it was all sidewalks and parking and bike racks and red tape and lots of time and money.
A friend who works with local busineses recently told me – there are so many more Midtown Reader stories out there, you wouldn’t believe it.
It’s a culture.
And our compromised business community hasn’t solved the problem.
I once asked a longtime business leader: When is the last time this Chamber took a public position contrary to that of local government?
Silence.
Couldn’t think of one.
Now, my dear friend Eddie Gonzalez Loumiet brings me great hope as the current Chamber chair. He is a visionary and the truth is if Tallahassee had 100 Eddies we would be a much better place.
But action has to be dramatic and it won’t be easy.
The Chamber made a strategic decision to deeply align itself with the majority on the Tallahassee city commission. I know because I helped develop that strategy.
It was a mistake.
The Chamber forgot something as it worked to keep progressives out of power – it forgot to hold the majority accountable. Can anyone name pro-business policies adopted by the Dailey-Goad regime. Tax cuts? Regulatory reform? Economic development success? Business incentives? Anything?
The Anti-Growth Disaster
Tallahassee also has to break out of its “sense of place” ruts. Terms like “quality of life” and “walkability” are not bad things. In fact, they’re important.
The problem is that they’ve too often been used as conversation stoppers rather than starters.
Over time, those concepts have been co-opted and weaponized by anti-growth ideologues who invoke them whenever a new housing development, business expansion, parking deck or infrastructure project is proposed.
The implication is always the same: growth threatens quality of life.
But that’s backwards.
Growth is what pays for quality of life.
“Growth is what pays for quality of life.”
Growth is what funds parks, trails, public safety, arts and recreation.
Without a thriving private sector, “quality of life” becomes little more than a slogan.
Those fighting new parking decks in Midtown, new housing developments, even in urban areas, and new development need to understand the effects of their efforts:
– They are killing jobs. Red Tape Florida recently did a piece citing two models that show how many blue-collar jobs are created when a 100-house development is built. When you show up wearing the same colored t-shirts to oppose a new development, you are campaigning against dozens of good paying trades jobs – plumbers, landscapers, cabinet makers, painters, electricians and more. The anti-growth movement is, by definition, an anti-labor movement.
– As mentioned, eventually they are drying up the government coffers that help preserve the things we all love about Tallahassee.
– They are contributing to the affordable housing crisis. Suppressing supply will drive up price EVERY TIME. And by the way, building $500k homes absolutely DOES help affordable housing for the same reason that somebody buying a $50k new car eventually helps a college kid buy and $8k Civic with 100,000 miles.
– Perhaps most importantly, a stagnant city has the most profound impact on its most vulnerable residents. While you fight to protect the pristine nature of your Betton or Killearn existence, those in other parts of town where you never travel are fighting for their very lives. That plumbing job you are killing could be a lifesaver or a ticket out of poverty for someone else.
“… for others, a ‘sense of place’ means simply living without the fear of violence…”
Not everybody’s “sense of place” is the same.
While for some it means majestic oaks and serene parks, for others a sense of place means simply living without the fear of violence or knowing where the next meal is coming from.
The Prescription
So, I promised you a prescription and here it comes.
– First, rebuild an independent private sector voice.
For decades, Tallahassee’s business community has allowed itself to become too intertwined with the very governments it is supposed to hold accountable. That’s not a criticism of any one person or company. It’s a structural problem.
At a minimum, The Chamber and other business organizations should adopt stronger conflict-of-interest standards, greater transparency and a renewed commitment to speaking plainly when local government is failing.
Some will say, “Come on, Skip. That’s not realistic. Too many businesses in this town depend on city and county government.”
My answer? Yeah. That’s the problem.
– Measure outcomes – honestly.
A business leader is equally interested in the good and bad news on his P&L. In Tallahassee bad news is ignored.
Dashboards are only useful if fully utilized as a tool, not cherry picked for positive press. Tallahassee is far too dependent on obscure web site rankings, the same people getting awards every month and proclamations. Private and public sector leaders should be obsessed with job growth, population, wages, taxable sales and private investment.
Local government leaders should demand more transparent and regular updates and constantly push staff to talk about what is being done to improve. If those numbers are moving in the right direction, celebrate. If they aren’t, stop pretending they are.
– Declare Tallahassee-Leon Open for Business
Every permitting process, zoning review and development decision should start with one question: How do we make this happen responsibly instead of why can’t it happen?
Local government should create a system to seek and receive relentless feedback from those trying to navigate the system. Not even a whiff of retribution should be tolerated in response to whistleblowers or those who issue complaints.
A full analysis of needed infrastructure should be conducted (Thomasville just landed a new industry in an existing industrial park – 100 jobs), including available land, utility capacity, zoning hindrances and more.
Then, every anti-growth rally should be met with statistics on how many jobs would be killed, how much new government revenue would be lost and real stories of poverty and crime that are the clear result of economic stagnation.
The embarrassing, gaslighting cry: “We are going to turn into Orlando,” needs to be countered with a more realistic cry: “We are going to turn into the only town left behind from Florida’s boom.”
“We are going to turn into the only town left behind from Florida’s boom.”
– Demand more from higher education
FSU, FAMU and TSC are not simply located in Tallahassee. They are among the most powerful institutions in Tallahassee. With that comes responsibility. Our institutions of higher education should be judged not only by enrollment and research dollars but by the economic impact they create for the community around them. They should be involved in community leadership not just with obligatory board seats but with active engagement. Even if some leaders are short-timers in Tallahassee, find those who are committed to the community and who can advocate for it and then empower them to bring about change.
I should add that TSC is really modeling this behavior best, taking the lead in AI education and trying to pull the rest of the community along on job readiness and new training models.
– Bring together the four legs of the stool
Find willing and able representatives from state and local government, higher education and the private sector – including a notable lack of usual suspects — to start developing a new vision for our community. Then lock them in a room and don’t let them out until they can answer one simple question: What should Tallahassee’s economy look like in 2040? Because right now, if you asked 20 influential people that question, you’d probably get 20 different answers.
And if those four major segments of our community can’t agree on where we’re going, why should anyone be surprised we’re drifting?
– Replace a scarcity mentality with abundance.
This community is underachieving in a dramatic and dangerous way. Too many private sector leaders choose control and self-interest over vision and creativity. Too many long-time residents choose NIMBYism and a plantation mentality over growth and opportunity for all.
Tallahassee spends too much time fretting about dividing the pie and not enough about growing it.
It’s time to find ways to expand. Growth vs. protecting our quality of life is a false choice. And remember, for many, urban living IS a better quality of life.
The Close
Tallahassee may not be dying. But it’s ill. And the first step in treating any illness is admitting you have one.
We don’t have a geography problem.
We don’t have a university problem.
We don’t have a natural-resources problem.
We don’t have a talent problem.
We have a leadership problem.
“We have a leadership problem.”
The good news is leadership problems can be fixed.
This community has extraordinary assets.
World-class universities.
The nation’s premier magnetics laboratory.
The center of government in one of the fastest-growing states in America.
Beautiful natural resources.
And a location that should make us the economic hub of North Florida.
The question is not whether Tallahassee can succeed. The question is whether we are finally willing to demand that it does.
Thank you very much.