Shining light on the good, bad and ugly of bureaucracy in Tallahassee

Three separate sessions at BOAF’s annual meeting addressed the same issue: the strained relationship between building officials and private providers. The message from the floor was unmistakable. 

By Red Tape Florida 

ORLANDO — When you pull a permit to remodel your kitchen, add a room, or build a commercial building in Florida, someone has to inspect the work. For most of American history, that someone worked for the government — a county or city building inspector on the public payroll, scheduling inspections on the government’s timeline. 

Florida changed that. Under a state law that has been expanded nearly every legislative session for the past decade, property owners and contractors in Florida can hire a licensed private firm — a “private provider” — to conduct plan reviews and building inspections instead of waiting for the government to get around to it. The private provider is licensed by the state, carries insurance, and is held to the same building code standards as a government inspector. The difference is speed and accountability: a private firm competing for business has strong incentives to show up when scheduled and do the job right. 

In South Florida’s most active construction markets, the private provider system is not an alternative to government inspection — it is the only way projects get built on any reasonable timeline. A Miami Beach building official said it plainly at a conference session last week: there is “absolutely no way” the Miami Beach skyline gets built without private providers. The city simply does not have enough inspectors. 

That system — and the relationship between private providers and the government building officials who are supposed to work alongside them — was the dominant topic of the Building Officials Association of Florida’s annual conference here last week. Not a single session. Three separate sessions addressed the private provider relationship, which in a conference setting is about as loud a signal as you can send. Red Tape Florida attended two of them. 

The Mood: Resignation, With Some Seething 

There was a feeling of resignation in the air that was hard to miss. Building officials understand that they have been losing at the legislative level year after year — and that aggressive resistance to private providers does nothing but provide the blueprint for the following year’s session. Florida’s legislature has consistently sided with the private sector on this issue, and the officials in the room largely know it. 

Make no mistake, seething was observed. But mostly those flames have been extinguished by the cold waters of legislative defeat. The dominant posture among the building officials who attended the private provider sessions was not defiance but uncertainty — a genuine desire to understand what the new rules require and how to implement them without creating additional legal exposure. 

That posture deserves credit. The officials who showed up for these sessions are self-selected for good faith. They are trying to figure out how to make a system work that some of their colleagues have spent years trying to undermine. 

The Loudest Voices Were the Diplomatic Ones 

The most notable thing about both private provider sessions was who was doing the talking — and what they were saying. 

Building officials from Miami Beach, Manatee County, Indian River County, and Lake County were among those who spoke most forcefully — not against private providers, but for a functional working relationship with them. The message from the floor was consistent and worth noting: the era of treating private providers as adversaries is over, and the building officials who haven’t figured that out yet are the ones driving unfavorable legislation for everyone. 

One building official put it plainly: “For every nuance we create as an AHJ, it’s going to be in the bill next year. Let’s stop trying to manipulate and learn how to work together.” That line landed in the room. It was broadly endorsed. 

Indian River County was cited repeatedly as a model of how the relationship can work — a jurisdiction where private providers are treated as an extension of the building department, given portal access, and integrated into the permitting workflow rather than managed at arm’s length. The contrast with unnamed obstructionist jurisdictions was pointed. 

The most memorable moment came from a private provider in the room who described the relationship from his side: “I’m not a bastard son — I’m part of a family. An extension of the building department.” The room received it well. Several building officials nodded. 

What the Legislature Got Right 

The private provider sessions were, implicitly, a referendum on the legislature’s approach to this issue over the past several years. The verdict in the room — even from building officials who would privately prefer more restrictive rules — was that the legislative direction has been correct. 

Florida’s private provider statute exists because the construction industry — contractors, developers, private inspectors, and ultimately consumers — needed a check on building department delays and inconsistencies that were adding real cost and time to projects. The legislature responded to those concerns by expanding the private provider system, reducing the ability of building departments to obstruct private provider work, and streamlining the paperwork requirements that had become a tool for delay in some jurisdictions. 

One jurisdiction had developed a 16-page form requirement for each private provider job. It was told at the conference, explicitly, that those forms are out. That is the legislature working as intended — identifying a specific abuse, naming it, and eliminating it. 

The updated statute also removed the notarization requirement for the notice to building officials — a small change that eliminated a friction point with no legitimate regulatory purpose. These are exactly the kinds of adjustments that make a system more functional for the businesses and consumers who depend on it. 

Why This Matters Beyond Permitting 

It is worth stepping back from the technical details of inspection fees and private provider portals to make a larger point. 

Every day a permitted project sits waiting for an inspection is a day that costs money. For a commercial developer, that cost is real but manageable. For a homeowner waiting on a kitchen remodel or a contractor trying to close out a job, it is genuinely disruptive. For a housing developer trying to deliver affordable units on a schedule that pencils out financially, inspection and permitting delays are not a minor inconvenience — they are a project risk that gets priced into rents and sale prices. 

Florida is in the middle of a housing affordability crisis that has multiple causes, most of them structural and difficult to address quickly. Permitting and inspection efficiency is not the biggest driver of housing costs. But it is one of the few levers that state and local government can actually pull without spending money it doesn’thave. A private provider system that works — that gets inspections done faster, keeps projects moving, and reduces the carrying cost of construction — is a meaningful, if modest, contribution to housing affordability. The legislature understands this. The building officials who are embracing the new system understand it too. 

HB 803: The Unsettled Fee Question 

The third major topic at the conference — addressed in a separate session on permitting costs — was HB 803, the new law that prohibits inspection fees from being based on total project cost and requires that fees reflect actual inspection costs. 

The mood in that session was anxious. Most building officials were candid that they do not yet know what compliance looks like in practice. The cross-subsidy model that has sustained building department budgets for decades — using revenue from large projects to cover the cost of small ones — is under legal pressure, and nobody in the room had a clean answer for how to handle it politically. One official estimated that a water heater changeout could cost $500 or more under a true cost-reflective model. That is a number that will get attention. 

The clearest consensus from that session: inspection fee schedules are going up statewide, most building departments will be conducting formal fee studies in the next 12 to 24 months, and the era of minimum flat fees tied to project value is ending. 

HB 803 is also a piece of legislation that responded directly to private sector concerns — specifically, the complaint that fee structures based on project cost were disconnected from the actual cost of providing inspection services and were being used to generate revenue rather than recover costs. Whether the cure creates its own complications remains to be seen. But the diagnosis was correct. 

What Comes Next 

The private provider relationship in Florida is not fixed. There are still jurisdictions that treat private providers as adversaries, still officials who will find new ways to create friction, and still a legislative cycle ahead that will test whether this year’s progress holds. 

But the conference left a cautiously optimistic impression. The building officials who are advocating for detente — and there are more of them than the frustrated-officials narrative would suggest — are making a practical argument that is hard to refute: the industry works better when everyone in it is pulling in the same direction. The private providers who were in the room, asking for consistency and stable rules and the professional respect their work deserves, are making the same argument from the other side. 

They are both right. And the legislature, to its credit, has been nudging them toward each other for several years. The nudging appears to be working. 

Red Tape Florida attended the BOAF Annual Conference on June 2–3, 2026 in Orlando. 

By Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida 

HUD just ordered Tallahassee to repay federal money. The findings are much worse than the public was led to believe. 

For weeks, Tallahassee residents have heard about an $8,450 door at the Holton Street Apartments. 

The figure became a symbol of government waste, sparked a political firestorm, and generated days of headlines. Along the way, many residents were left with the impression that the controversy centered on a questionable contractor invoice, an unusually expensive repair, or perhaps a paperwork dispute that had gotten out of hand. 

That is not what HUD found. 

Last week, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ordered the City of Tallahassee to reimburse all federal funds associated with the Holton Street project. After reading the agency’s findings, it becomes clear that the federal government was examining something much larger than a door. HUD was trying to determine whether the City could demonstrate compliance with the most basic requirements of the grant itself. 

At the May 13 City Commission meeting, Commissioner Curtis Richardson described accusations related to the matter as “unfounded.” Commissioner Dianne Williams-Cox urged caution and noted that residents had benefited from lead-removal efforts. Mayor John Dailey warned that certain allegations could expose individuals to legal liability. 

HUD was not evaluating political accusations. It was evaluating compliance. And after months of review, repeated requests for records and examination of the City’s responses, HUD concluded that it could not verify that fundamental requirements of the grant had been satisfied. 

One of the first lessons children learn in school is that getting the right answer is only part of the assignment. You also have to show your work. HUD’s letter reads like a federal agency that repeatedly asked the City to show its work and concluded that the documentation simply wasn’t there. 

The project was funded through a federal lead-hazard reduction grant designed primarily to protect children under six from lead exposure. Yet HUD concluded that the City “did not sufficiently demonstrate compliance with these core program requirements and objectives.” It found that the City could not adequately demonstrate that housing units containing children under six were consistently prioritized, even though protecting those children is the central purpose of the program. 

HUD also found: 

• Records did not support that all firms and workers involved in the project possessed the certifications required to perform federally funded lead-hazard work. 

• It could not verify tenant eligibility. 

• It could not verify procurement decisions. 

• It could not verify that costs charged to the grant were reasonable. 

• It could not verify that turnover work had been separately procured or competitively evaluated. 

Much of the public debate focused on the now-famous $8,450 doors. The assumption was that the controversy revolved around price: were taxpayers getting a reasonable deal or not? 

HUD’s concern was different. The agency noted that lead-hazard reduction methods are supposed to be selected based on lead inspections, risk assessments and healthy homes evaluations. Yet HUD found that the City had not provided sufficient documentation demonstrating that the replacement activities were selected in accordance with those requirements. In one of the most striking passages in the letter, HUD wrote that it was “unable to verify that these standards were met for all (or any) of the door replacement activities conducted under the project.” 

The public was debating the price of the doors while HUD was asking for the paperwork. The issue is not whether a door should have cost $8,450. The issue is whether the City can show that the work was selected, approved and documented in the manner required by the federal program that paid for it. 

The questions facing City Hall are now much larger than the price of a door. Was this actually the lead-hazard reduction program HUD thought it was funding? How did a federal grant intended to protect children from lead exposure become associated with a project that HUD says it cannot verify met core program objectives? What did commissioners know about contractor qualifications, procurement options and project scope when approvals were sought? And if HUD now says it cannot verify eligibility, necessity, procurement and certifications, what exactly did taxpayers pay for? 

The City of Tallahassee’s Housing and Community Resilience Department employs 42 people and oversees housing programs, community development initiatives, resilience efforts, neighborhood services and federal grants. Yet when HUD examined one project, the agency repeatedly reached the same conclusion: it could not verify that key requirements had been met. 

That should concern taxpayers regardless of their political views. The purpose of a bureaucracy is not simply to spend money. The purpose of a bureaucracy is to create accountability. Citizens accept forms, procedures, compliance reviews, procurement rules, reporting requirements, certifications and oversight mechanisms because those systems are supposed to demonstrate that public dollars were spent properly. 

When the agency providing the money concludes that it cannot verify whether those requirements were satisfied, the conversation is no longer about a door. It becomes a question of competence. 

The door got the headlines. 

The findings are the real story. 

From population to jobs to retail sales, the local economy is in distress 

By Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida 

Leon County’s retail sales dropped 10% in 2025. Population actually fell while Florida grew at the second-highest rate in the nation. And the county lost jobs from 2024 to 2025, according to the Florida Chamber Foundation. 

The capital county of the nation’s third-largest state has an economy in distress. The people responsible for doing something about it do not appear to be measuring the right things – or even paying attention. 

Start with retail sales, the clearest measure of whether people who live here are earning money and spending it locally. According to OEV’s own dashboard, which draws on Florida Department of Revenue sales tax data, Leon County posted $391.6 million in taxable sales in January 2026. Twelve months earlier, in January 2025, the number was $437 million. 

That is a $45 million decline in one year, in nominal dollars, before any inflation adjustment. 

In one year, Leon County lost the equivalent of a mid-sized regional employer’s annual payroll in consumer spending. Not during a recession year. Not after a hurricane. Just a regular year in which people apparently spent significantly less money in Leon County, or spent it somewhere else. 

And that single-year drop is the sharp end of a longer, uglier trend. Pull back to January 2022 and Leon County’s taxable sales were $404 million. Four years later, they were $391 million, lower in nominal dollars despite four years of inflation that should have pushed the number higher automatically. 

Here is what matters about taxable sales data: it is not inflation-adjusted. It is raw dollars collected at the register. As the state’s own economists have noted, the immediate response to inflation is an increase in sales tax collections because prices are higher. In other words, if you sell the same number of goods at higher prices, taxable sales go up without any real growth at all. Leon County’s went down. 

Using standard inflation adjustment based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data, Leon County’s real retail sales have declined by approximately 16.3% since January 2022. Florida statewide declined too, but only 4.2% in real terms over the same period. Leon County’s real decline was nearly four times as severe as the state average. 

In dollar terms, Leon County would need roughly $467 million in monthly retail sales today just to keep pace with inflation. It is posting $391 million. The gap, $76 million a month, is the purchasing power that has quietly drained out of the local economy while OEV issued press releases about GDP growth and leading-metro rankings. 

OEV and those trying to defend the county’s anemic economic performance will likely point to COVID-era distortions. It is a convenient argument, but it does not hold up. The baseline here, January 2022, was chosen precisely because the stimulus sugar high had largely burned off by then. Federal pandemic relief money had already cycled through the economy. Consumer spending had normalized. That makes January 2022 the honest starting point, not the artificially inflated peak months of 2021. 

The problem with the COVID defense is straightforward: Florida statewide, starting from the same post-pandemic baseline, grew nominal retail sales by 10.9% through January 2026. Leon County, starting from the same baseline, fell 3.2% in nominal terms. If pandemic distortion explained the weakness, it would show up across the state. It does not. 

This is not a COVID story. It is a Leon County story. 

The Population Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About 

You cannot separate the retail sales story from the population story, because they are the same story. 

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s most current estimates, data released this spring, Leon County’s population stood at 299,048 as of July 1, 2025. That is a decline of 1,440 residents from the 300,488 counted in July 2024. 

Over the full five-year period from 2020 to 2024, Leon County grew 2.8 percent, ranking 56th out of 67 Florida counties and 29th out of the 30 largest counties in the state. Florida as a whole grew 8.5 percent over the same period. Neighboring Bay County grew 14 percent. Even Alachua County, home to a similarly government-heavy economy in Gainesville, outpaced Leon at 4.8 percent. 

Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, one of the nation’s leading scholars of urban growth and decline, has shown that population loss and economic weakness are deeply connected. Cities that lose their productive edge often struggle to attract the people, talent, and investment needed to regain momentum. 

The Jobs Picture 

At the Tallahassee Chamber’s own Economic Forecast earlier this year, the Florida Chamber Foundation delivered a candid assessment that did not match OEV’s marketing materials: Leon County lost more than 2,630 jobs compared to the prior year, with the growth rate dipping 1.6%. The Florida Chamber Foundation said Leon County will need more than 6,630 new jobs by 2030 just to stay competitive. 

“With 25% of our GDP being attributed to government,” the Florida Chamber Foundation’s keynote speaker said, “that means we need to be more active in driving private-sector growth.” 

That is the business community’s own verdict, delivered at the business community’s own event. 

Meanwhile, workers in the Tallahassee metro area earn an average hourly wage of $27.99, roughly 14% below the national average of $32.66, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

The Inputs and the Outputs 

OEV’s response to data like this is predictable: point to GDP. In February 2026, OEV Director Keith Bowers declared that Tallahassee had its best economic year in more than a decade, citing 4.3% real GDP growth. The press release went out on the city’s own email list. 

What the press release did not mention is that the underlying Bureau of Economic Analysis data shows Leon County’s GDP growth was driven disproportionately by government spending and rising real estate values, not broad private-sector expansion. Manufacturing contracted sharply in real terms in 2024, even as the headline number rose. GDP counts a government payroll increase the same way it counts a new factory. In a state-capital economy, that distinction matters enormously. 

OEV’s broader economic narrative is built almost entirely on input metrics: GDP figures, R&D spending, university enrollment and rankings placements purchased in Area Development magazine. These are measures of activity. They are not the same thing as outcomes. 

The output metrics, the ones that tell you whether people actually want to live here, work here and spend money here, are telling a different story: retail sales down sharply, population declining, jobs lost and wages 14% below the national average. 

The question worth asking, and the one that a national search for a new city manager and a county commission facing tough budget decisions should both be asking, is simple: what are we actually getting for the investment, and who is measuring the right things? 

Right now, the agency tasked with answering that question is the same agency producing the marketing materials. And the dashboard they built themselves suggests the answer is not what the press releases claim. 

By Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida 

Pam McVety’s recent column raises a thoughtful question: in a world transitioning toward cleaner energy, does a large travel center built around gasoline make sense? 

It’s a fair question — and one informed by her background as a scientist and longtime advocate on environmental and public health issues. The concerns she outlines are real, and the broader direction she describes is one most people would agree with: lower emissions, cleaner energy, and more efficient transportation. 

But it’s also a question that operates at a level of abstraction that doesn’t reflect how communities — or markets — actually function. 

There are at least three different conversations happening here. 

• The first is what we would like the world to look like. 

• The second is what we believe people should do. 

• And the third — the one that ultimately determines whether projects like this get built — is what people are actually doing. 

Right now, people are still overwhelmingly driving gasoline-powered vehicles. That is not a political position. It is a market reality. 

As long as that remains true, the question is not whether fueling infrastructure exists. It must. The question is what form it takes. 

Facilities like this are typically located along major interstate corridors, where demand is already concentrated. That often means fewer detours and more direct trips. The result can be greater efficiency, not less. 

Modern travel centers are also not static. Many now include electric vehicle charging alongside traditional fueling. Buc-ee’s locations in multiple states have begun incorporating EV infrastructure, reflecting the same transition Ms. McVety describes. 

The broader issue is one of scale. 

The energy transition Ms. McVety is advocating for is a macro challenge. It will be driven by technology, policy, pricing, and consumer behavior over time — not by the approval or rejection of individual projects. 

That doesn’t make local decisions irrelevant. But it does mean that treating a single project as a proxy for global outcomes can lead to conclusions that don’t hold up. 

There is also a more basic question at play — one that sits at the core of how communities should make decisions. 

Projects like this are not approved because they align with a particular worldview. They are approved — or rejected — based on whether they meet established rules: zoning, traffic, environmental standards, and applicable state law. 

What Ms. McVety is effectively arguing is that even if a project meets those standards, it should be denied because it does not align with a broader policy preference about energy use. 

That is a different kind of decision. 

And it is one that puts government in the position of picking winners and losers based not on compliance, but on ideology. 

And that logic doesn’t stop with gasoline. 

If we shouldn’t build infrastructure tied to current consumer behavior because we want that behavior to change, then we wouldn’t build fast-food restaurants because of public health concerns. We wouldn’t build water parks because of water consumption. We wouldn’t build bookstores because of paper use. 

That is not how communities function. 

We do not prohibit entire categories of activity because they are imperfect. We regulate them, improve them, and over time — as behavior changes — the market shifts with it. 

And there are real downstream consequences to getting this wrong. 

Leon County Schools is preparing to ask voters to renew a half-penny sales tax for capital needs. Blueprint projects rely on similar revenue streams. When growth is stifled, those funding sources are affected — and so are the roads, schools, and infrastructure they support. 

The transition Ms. McVety describes is real. But it is not instantaneous. It is measured in decades, not news cycles. And during that transition, communities still need to function. 

That includes providing the infrastructure that supports how people actually live and travel today. 

The risk in this debate is not that we will build one too many gas stations. 

It is that we will confuse long-term goals with near-term decision-making — and lose sight of the difference between aspiration and reality. 

Both matter. 

But they are not the same thing. 

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. 

Madam Sunshine already knows how it ends 

By Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida 

Madam Sunshine — RTF’s Notary of Inevitable Outcomes — doesn’t predict the future. She reads the pattern. And in Tallahassee’s city manager search, the pattern is already complete. 

She has lit her candle. Her notepad is open. Three items are already checked: Divided Board. Lame Duck Timing. Predictable Outcome. She peers into her crystal ball — which, it should be noted, is fully subject to Florida’s public records law — and sees the Tallahassee Capitol dome staring back at her. 

“I see a press release,” she says, not looking up. “It uses the words ‘rigorous,’ ‘transparent,’ and ‘the best candidate for Tallahassee’s future.’ I have read this press release before.” 

She seems unsurprised. She is always unsurprised. 

The setup 

City Manager Reese Goad is leaving on September 30. A new commission takes office in November. Rather than pass this decision to the incoming body — the one voters are about to elect in a change election — outgoing Mayor John Dailey has announced that the current commission will conduct a nationwide search and hire before the new commission is seated. His justification: “Collectively, that’s over 65 years of public service.” He did not mention that virtually every significant decision this commission has confronted ended in a 3-2 vote, or that his math includes the two commissioners whose opinions his majority has routinely ignored. 

He also left out that those years of experience have presided over the nation’s most expensive airport, a giant tax increase, a high crime rate and stagnant population growth. 

Let’s be clear: What Mayor Dailey is proposing is not a national search. It is the performance of one.  

Madam Sunshine checks her notepad. All three boxes were already checked. She takes a sip from her mug. 

The precedents 

History, it turns out, has opinions about what happens next. 

Palm Bay, Florida — 2018. The city conducted a genuine national search — 79 applicants, seven finalists, outside candidate hired. His name was Gregg Lynk. In November 2018, a newly elected council member was sworn in and promptly cast the deciding vote to fire him. The vote was 3-2. Lynk’s offense: being hired by the wrong commission. 

Portsmouth, Virginia — 2023. City Manager Tonya Chapman was fired by a new council after six months on the job. Six months. A national search. A new council. A firing. The headline wrote itself. 

Spokane Valley, Washington — 2016. A new council majority ousted City Manager Mike Jackson despite the mayor acknowledging there was “no malfeasance or incompetence or wrongdoing.” A new majority wanted its own direction. Jackson’s qualifications were never the issue. His hiring commission was. 

But wait, there is a different way! 

Palm Coast, Florida — the city that said no. Facing the identical situation, Palm Coast looked at the risk and chose to wait. New commission seated. Search conducted. Hire made. No drama. No 3-2 firing on night one. 

This is what the search firm said about Palm Coast waiting: “Realistically, most qualified city managers are not going to want to step into that uncertain landscape of who their direct reports are going to be, the five that are going to be sitting at this dais.” 

Tallahassee is choosing to be Palm Bay. It has the option to be Palm Coast. 

“I see city managers in Ohio and Oregon and places that end in -ville,” Madam Sunshine continues, peering deeper into the glass. “Impressive people. Impressive resumes. I see them reading about Tallahassee. I see Google search results like ‘divided Tallahassee commission’ and ‘Palm Bay city manager fired.’ I see them quietly closing their browsers. I see them returning to their current jobs, where nobody is about to fire them.” 

She watches the inbox. It is not filling up the way one might hope. 

She does not appear surprised. 

Why qualified candidates will pass 

Any city manager worth recruiting has a career to protect. They have a family. They have a mortgage. They are not going to relocate to Tallahassee — or even submit an application — knowing that a new commission takes office sixty days after they’re hired, that the hiring body has a 3-2 dysfunction record, and that the precedent in cities exactly like this one is termination with prejudice. 

What is left when serious external candidates self-select out? Internal candidates. People who are already here. People who have nothing to lose by applying because their current job exists regardless of the outcome. People, in other words, who were always going to get this job. 

What Madam Sunshine sees next is not just a hiring decision. It is a protection mechanism. The bureaucracy protecting itself. The status quo preserving continuity — not because it is working, but because it is comfortable. Red Tape Florida has documented that record: weak job growth, underwhelming economic developmentand mind-boggling permitting policies and practices. This process does not challenge that record. It guarantees it. 

“Now the crystal ball gets interesting,” Madam Sunshine says, leaning forward. “I see a search firm. I see marginally qualified external finalists. I see community forums where residents ask thoughtful questions and nothing is decided. And then — oh, here it is — the commission reaches a stunning conclusion.” 

She pauses for effect. She doesn’t need to. She has known this part since the beginning. 

“The best candidate was here all along!” 

Madam Sunshine sets down her mug. She affixes her notarial seal. She blows out the candle. 

What should happen instead 

There is no emergency here. Goad leaves September 30. The new commission arrives in November. A senior staff member serves in an interim capacity for sixty days. It has been done in cities far larger than Tallahassee. It is not complicated. 

The new commission — with a voter mandate and at least the possibility of a more collegial majority — deserves to choose the person who will report to them. That is not a radical idea. It is what Palm Coast did. It is what good governance looks like. 

If Madam Sunshine is indeed clairvoyant. If a “national search” doesn’t find out-of-market candidates worthy of leading the capital city of the nation’s third largest state. If the disingenuous fallback is an internal candidate …  

… then you won’t need a crystal ball to know what has happened: 

Tallahassee’s insiders are protecting an embarrassing status quo by stacking the Tarot card deck. 

Governor DeSantis should sign HB 803 – and we believe he will 

By Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida 

Florida does not need another speech about housing affordability. It needs fewer obstacles to building housing. 

That is what HB 803 addresses. 

The bill, now awaiting the governor’s signature, goes directly at the layer of local permitting that quietly drives up costs — duplicative reviews, inflated fees, shifting requirements, and timelines that stretch for reasons that have little to do with safety or code compliance. 

This is not abstract. Red Tape Florida has documented it. 

In Gulf County, the county imposed a $500 “planning review fee” on applicants who used a private provider — the very tool state law created to speed up permitting. Builders were effectively told: use the private-sector fast lane and pay a toll for the privilege. In some cases, they were also routed through additional internal steps before permits could move forward. 

HB 803 shuts that down. 

The bill requires local governments to reduce permit fees when private providers are used — at least 25 percent in some cases, and at least 50 percent when private providers handle both plan review and inspections. It also prohibits additional administrative or inspection fees tied to the use of a private provider. 

That is a straightforward fix. If government is doing less work, it should not charge the same — and it certainly should not charge more. 

Alachua County offers another example of how the system has drifted. 

RTF reported that the county created a “Private Provider Inspection Confirmation” process that does not exist in state law. Contractors described county inspectors redoing inspections already completed by private providers, issuing correction notices without coordinating with them, and requiring additional approvals before work could proceed. 

The county also required scheduling through a portal that limited flexibility, rejected documentation for technical reasons, and added layers of process that had the effect of slowing projects even after private-provider approval. 

That is not oversight. That is duplication. 

HB 803 addresses that by limiting how far local governments can go once a qualified private provider is engaged. It restricts local review largely to true local issues — site conditions, floodplain management, administrative completeness — rather than allowing a second round of building-code review under a different name. 

It also requires local governments to maintain registration systems for private providers and bars them from charging administrative fees just to participate in the process. 

The point is simple: if the state authorizes private providers, local governments cannot quietly recreate the same process and call it something else. 

Tallahassee provides a third, more familiar example. 

RTF reported on a property owner attempting to renovate a small maintenance shed at an apartment complex. What should have been routine turned into a multi-year process involving dozens of plan-review comments, additional surveys, stormwater requirements, tree-mitigation calculations despite no tree removal, structural questions about decades-old footers, and even a dispute over a roof overhang extending a few inches beyond a setback line. 

At a certain point, it became cheaper and faster to demolish the structure than to satisfy the process. 

That is the system Florida says it wants to fix. 

HB 803 does not solve every one of those problems, but it targets the mechanics behind them. 

It requires more uniform building permit applications statewide, reducing the need to relearn the process from one jurisdiction to another. It creates a five-business-day decision window for certain smaller residential permits once an application is complete. It prevents inspection fees from being based on total project cost rather than the actual cost of the inspection. 

And it addresses a quieter constraint on supply by requiring that offsite-constructed housing — including modular and manufactured homes — be treated the same as site-built homes. Local governments can no longer impose more restrictive rules simply because of how a home is constructed. 

Taken together, these changes do something important: they reduce uncertainty. 

And uncertainty is expensive. 

Every additional review, every extra requirement, every week a project sits waiting for a decision adds cost — financing, carrying, and risk. Those costs do not disappear. They are built into the final price of housing. 

If Florida is serious about affordability, it cannot ignore that reality. 

HB 803 does not rely on subsidies or new programs. It removes friction. It aligns fees with actual work. It reinforces the role of private providers. And it sets clearer expectations for how permitting should function. 

It also reflects a consistent direction in state policy. Florida has spent the past several years pushing to reduce barriers to development and increase predictability. This bill fits squarely within that approach. 

The Legislature’s support reflects that. HB 803 passed with overwhelming, bipartisan margins. 

There is nothing controversial about requiring government fees to match government work. 

There is nothing controversial about preventing duplicate inspections. 

There is nothing controversial about treating different types of housing fairly. 

What is controversial is the status quo — where local processes add cost without adding value, and where builders and property owners face a system that too often feels designed to slow them down rather than help them move forward. 

Governor DeSantis has made cutting red tape a central theme of his administration. HB 803 is exactly that. 

It reduces unnecessary costs. It limits duplication. It makes it easier to build. 

Florida does not need another conversation about housing. 

It needs fewer barriers to building it. 

This bill removes some of them. 

It should be signed and we believe it will be. 

From contradictory records to weak results, new documents reveal a strategy that isn’t competing 

By Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida 

If you want to understand Tallahassee’s economic development problem, start here: 

The Office of Economic Vitality was asked by Red Tape Florida to produce the last three years of marketing and promotional spending — broadly defined to include advertising, sponsorships, memberships, events, and payments to third parties. 

OEV’s initial response produced just two print ads totaling roughly $13,400. 

After a follow-up request from Red Tape Florida, expressing skepticism that the response was complete, OEV produced a second batch of records showing approximately $132,700 in additional spending, bringing the total to about $146,000. 

But even that was not the full picture. Separate internal materials reviewed by Red Tape Florida identify additional marketing channels that do not appear in either records production. 

This doesn’t just raise questions about transparency. 

It helps explain a broader pattern — one that shows up in limited out-of-market reach, heavy in-state image-building, inconsistent data, and a continued failure to turn Tallahassee’s most unique asset into a driver of economic growth.  

And that pattern becomes clearer the deeper you go.  

A trend of in-state spending 

Start with where the money is actually going. 

Of the roughly $146,000 in documented spending, a significant share is tied to Florida Trend — a publication with strong visibility inside Florida, but limited reach among national site selectors or companies making location decisions outside the state. 

There is nothing inherently wrong with advertising in Florida Trend. 

But it is not, by itself, an out-of-market recruitment strategy. 

Economic development is not about being known in Florida. It is about competing outside of it. 

And on that front, the numbers are striking. 

Over the same three-year period, just $13,400 — less than ten percent of total documented spending — went to Area Development Magazine, one of the core national outlets used to reach site selectors and corporate decision-makers. 

Those dollars bought a total of two print ads. In three years. 

That imbalance is not incidental. It reflects a strategy that is far more focused on in-state visibility than on national competition. 

And that’s before we consider what OEV – funded with $20 million in tax dollars over 10 years — didn’t include in either of its public records responses. 

Missing marketing 

A slide from an August 2025 OEV presentation to a local advisory board, obtained by Red Tape Florida, lists “Recent & Scheduled Advertising” placements that include Tallahassee Reports, Capital Outlook, airport advertising, Business in Focus, LIVE in Tallahassee, and unspecified digital buys. 

If these placements are part of OEV’s marketing activity, why do they not appear in either response to a public records request that explicitly asked for all marketing and promotional expenditures? How much was spent in each area? What were the results? 

Beyond the lack of transparency, who is this strategy designed to reach?  

Several of these outlets are local or niche platforms with limited exposure beyond Tallahassee or North Florida. Others are general business features that do not specifically target site selectors or corporate decision-makers. 

And, of course, as Red Tape Florida readers know, Tallahassee Reports dramatically changed its coverage of the City once taxpayer dollars started flowing its way. OEV fits the pattern – Red Tape Florida could not find a single story critical of OEV since 2020. 

Back to marketing focus, it matters because it’s not just about visibility — it’s about visibility in the right places. 

And there is little in this list that suggests a sustained effort to reach the audiences that actually drive location decisions. 

But the issue is not just incomplete records or reaching the right audience. The performance data in the same presentation raises an equally important concern. 

Across multiple slides, OEV reports digital and marketing engagement that can be most charitably described as modest. Limited reach, low interaction, and little evidence of sustained audience growth. 

Communities that are serious about competing for visitors or investment typically measure engagement in the hundreds of thousands — or millions — of impressions across campaigns. By contrast, the activity reflected in OEV’s own materials is at a much smaller scale, with limited reach and minimal interaction. Just 89 clicks on the OEV web site in Q2 of 2025?  

Not good. 

Even if the strategy were locally focused, the results would still need to justify the approach. 

Instead, the data suggests a marketing effort that is not only narrowly targeted but also underperforming within that narrow scope. 

The same pattern shows up in how Tallahassee treats its most distinctive economic asset. 

Marketing magnetism 

The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory is, by any measure, a world-class institution. It is also one of the few truly unique differentiators the community has in a competitive economic development landscape. Yet, Tallahassee’s underperformance at growing economic activity around this asset has been well-documented. 

A notable and positive exception and recent big win for OEV — in collaboration with FSU — has been securing an important magnetics conference for two straight years. It’s surely a source of lead generation that is important for Tallahassee to retain. 

Further, OEV has, at times, attempted to build a brand around the Mag Lab. Internal messaging refers to Tallahassee as the “Magnetic Capital of the World.” A 2023 video promotes the lab as “Florida’s Most Powerful Attraction,” highlighting its potential impact on energy, transportation, and healthcare. (Full disclosure: The video, which was nominated for a Suncoast Emmy award, was produced by Hammerhead Communications, in partnership with The Zachary Group). 

But there is little evidence of a sustained effort to turn that concept into an actual recruitment strategy. Which is a fancy way of saying – that message is not being spread. 

The video itself has drawn minimal viewership – 308 views on YouTube at last check. There is no visible campaign built around it. No consistent targeting of industries that would logically cluster around magnetics research, advanced materials, or high-field applications. 

In other words, Tallahassee has a compelling story to tell. It just isn’t telling it where it matters. 

Now, all of this could be overlooked if OEV was top notch at blocking and tackling. If the scoreboard was lighting up with wins. If the area was known for its business-friendliness and responsiveness. 

But Red Tape Florida readers know that’s not the case. 

From CEOs who wanted to come to Tallahassee, but eventually gave up, to the reality that there is only one out-of-market win for OEV in 10 years to the sad reality of our area’s poor job numbers, to the 0-for-2025 performance … the lack of marketing matches the results. 

The bottom line 

Put all of this together, and the pattern is difficult to ignore. 

• An organization that struggles to produce a complete accounting of its own marketing activity. 

• A spending profile that favors in-state visibility over out-of-market competition. 

• A marketing footprint that is local, scattered, and not clearly aligned with decision-makers. 

• Performance data that shows limited traction even within that footprint. 

• And a world-class asset that remains under-leveraged as an economic driver. 

These are not separate issues. They reinforce each other. And they lead to a simple conclusion: 

Tallahassee’s economic development challenge is not just about the results. It is about whether the system is designed to produce them.  

Of course, OEV is simply a part of a community-wide public sector pattern. Red Tape Florida has documented a similar mentality with the City of Tallahassee – ignoring non-performance and mediocrity while simultaneously pumping out feel good stories and touting obscure rankings.  

Meanwhile, the economic development and business world passes Tallahassee by because companies don’t wait for follow-ups. They make decisions based on who shows up, who makes a clear case, and who competes. 

Right now, Tallahassee isn’t doing enough of that. 

And the records — incomplete as they may be — make that clearer than ever. 

By Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida 

Florida’s political leadership has been clear: the state needs more housing, and it needs it faster. 

Over the past two years, lawmakers have passed a series of increasingly aggressive reforms aimed at making that happen. The Live Local Act opened the door to higher-density residential development in commercial and mixed-use areas. Follow-on legislation strengthened those provisions — clarifying height allowances, tightening approval standards, and giving developers more tools to challenge local denials. 

Taken together, the direction of state policy is unmistakable. 

Florida is trying to make it easier to build. 

But the fact that lawmakers have had to revisit and refine the law — first through SB 328 in 2024, and later through SB 1730 in 2025 — raises a natural question: 

If the policy is working cleanly, why does it keep needing to be strengthened? 

One answer, reflected in legal and industry analysis, is that the original law created confusion and, in some cases, disputes between developers and local governments over how it should be interpreted and applied. 

In other words, the problem was not just what the law said. 

It was how it worked in practice. 

That tension is now playing out most visibly in South Florida. 

In Surfside, a proposed 11-story Live Local development — in a town where height is otherwise capped at four stories — triggered immediate and intense backlash from residents and local officials. The project was legally grounded in the statute, but politically controversial from the start. The result was not a clean approval process, but a high-profile local fight over what the law actually allows and how far it should go. 

In Hollywood, the conflict moved even further. A Broward County judge sided with the city in a dispute over a proposed Live Local tower, prompting the developer to challenge what it described as a misinterpretation of the law. That case illustrates a different phase of the same issue: disagreements over Live Local are no longer just playing out in public meetings — they are moving into the courts. 

And these are not isolated examples. 

Industry reporting and legal commentary indicate that multiple South Florida communities have pushed back on Live Local projects, either through litigation, policy adjustments, or political pressure. In some cases, local governments are testing the limits of the law. In others, they are attempting to shape outcomes within it. 

That helps explain why lawmakers have continued to act. 

Recent legislation, including HB 399, goes even further in limiting local discretion — requiring more objective standards and narrowing the ability of local governments to deny qualifying projects. The message from the state is consistent: reduce friction, increase predictability, and move projects forward. 

But the emergence of these conflicts suggests something important. 

The gap between policy and execution has not closed. 

It has simply shifted. 

The Live Local Act largely governs what happens at the point of formal approval. But development projects are shaped long before they reach a hearing. 

They move through pre-application discussions, staff review cycles, design revisions, and informal feedback processes that are not always visible to the public. 

It is in those stages — before a vote is ever taken — that timelines expand, costs increase, and projects are quietly reshaped. 

Local governments cite real pressures — infrastructure constraints, staffing limitations, community concerns about density. Those pressures are legitimate. But they do not change the math on Florida’s housing shortage, and they do not excuse a pattern of delay, litigation, and resistance that leaves working families without affordable options. 

But the result is a system where state-level intent and local-level execution are not always aligned. 

For developers, that creates a new reality. 

The challenge is no longer simply understanding what the law allows. It is navigating how that law is interpreted, applied, and, in some cases, contested — both politically and legally. 

And for policymakers, the implication is just as significant. 

Passing legislation is only the first step. 

Ensuring that it translates into actual housing production depends on what happens after the law is passed — in staff reviews, in administrative processes, and increasingly, in courtrooms. 

Florida has made it clear that it wants to build more housing. 

The question now is whether the system that delivers that housing can move at the same speed as the policy designed to enable it. 

That is where the next phase of this story will be decided. 

If you’ve been following along, you know the story.

A perfectly poured, fully compliant, taxpayer-funded sidewalk in Midtown Tallahassee — that doesn’t connect to anything.

Not a mistake. Not temporary. Required.

So we did what any reasonable person would do.

We wrote a song about it.

Introducing The Red Tape Ramblers — a new (and possibly recurring) musical experiment from Red Tape Florida, turning real-world examples of local government dysfunction into something a little more… listenable.

“Sidewalk to Nowhere” is based on a real project on Gadsden Street, where a developer was required to build a short stretch of sidewalk that leads nowhere, adding cost, delay, and exactly zero public benefit.

It’s funny. It’s absurd. And it’s also the point.

Because this is how it works — not in theory, but in practice.

Give it a listen below.

And if you’ve seen something like this in your own community, send it our way. There’s a good chance it ends up in the next track.