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

By Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida 

When Red Tape Florida launched, the mission wasn’t simply to criticize local government. 

The mission was to encourage better local government. 

That’s why it’s worth recognizing when public agencies move in the right direction. 

This week, the Office of Economic Vitality issued a Request for Proposals seeking a marketing firm to promote Tallahassee as the “Magnetics Capital of the World.” The initiative would build a multimedia campaign centered on one of the community’s greatest economic assets — the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory — and its potential to attract companies, investment and talent. 

The timing is noteworthy. 

In April, Red Tape Florida published an analysis questioning why OEV’s marketing efforts largely overlooked the MagLab while emphasizing more generic quality-of-life messaging. The argument wasn’t that Tallahassee needed more marketing. It was that Tallahassee needed to market the right thing. 

This RFP suggests OEV is doing exactly that. And that’s great news. 

Tallahassee-Leon appears to be placing greater emphasis on one of its most distinctive competitive advantages. For more than three decades, the MagLab has been the world’s premier magnetics research facility. Communities across America would gladly trade places with Tallahassee if they could. 

Yet the region has struggled to build the kind of private-sector ecosystem that often grows around world-class research institutions. 

Marketing alone won’t solve that challenge. 

But it’s an important place to start. 

The RFP calls for a comprehensive campaign to improve brand recognition, increase awareness of Tallahassee’s magnetic technologies, market targeted industries and position the community as the “Magnetics Capital of the World.”  

It also asks that this newly developed creative be marketed, through paid digital channels, among others. This is an important change from prior marketing efforts that led to award winning creative sitting on a shelf. 

Perhaps most importantly, the project would tie marketing efforts to growing the local magnetics industry cluster — not simply creating a new slogan. 

The real measure of success won’t be impressions, clicks or social media engagement. 

It will be whether more magnetics companies relocate here. Whether more startups commercialize MagLab research. Whether more suppliers choose Tallahassee. Whether more high-paying private-sector jobs follow. 

Those are the outcomes that matter. 

Red Tape Florida will continue asking difficult questions when warranted. But credibility also requires acknowledging progress. 

When government makes decisions that better position Tallahassee for long-term economic success, those decisions deserve recognition as well. 

We’re looking at you, Manatee, Brevard, Sarasota, Lake and Volusia 

By Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida 

Nobody who showed up to fight a housing development ever carried a sign that said “I oppose plumber jobs.” 

But that’s what they support. 

In the past 12 months, five Florida counties — Sarasota, Brevard, Manatee, Lake, and Volusia — blocked or effectively killed housing developments totaling 2,469 homes. In each case, the formula was familiar: concerned neighbors, packed commission chambers, petitions, warnings about traffic and flooding and neighborhood character. In each case, the commission obliged. 

Red Tape Florida applied the National Association of Home Builders’ Local Economic Impact Model — the industry standard for measuring residential construction’s economic footprint — to each of the five projects. The results should be posted on the wall of every county commission chamber in Florida. 

The Jobs Florida Never Created 

Twelve thousand jobs. Nearly $900 million dollars in wages and income. Gone — not because of a recession, not because of a hurricane, not because of some market failure. Gone because of petition drives and planning board testimony and commission votes cast to preserve neighborhood character. 

The Manatee County figure alone should stop a room. In February 2026, commissioners unanimously denied Lennar Homes’ “Lone Valley” project — 2,047 single-family homes on 683 acres near Buckeye Road in Parrish. The vote is especially notable because the county’s own Planning Commission had already unanimously recommended approval. Professional planners endorsed it. Elected commissioners killed it anyway. The NAHB model puts the economic cost of that single vote at more than 10,000 jobs and $763 million in income. That is not a development project that was denied. That is an economy. 

Birds, Flooding, Trees, and Traffic 

The stated reasons varied by county. In Sarasota, it was proximity to the Celery Fields — a beloved bird sanctuary adjacent to the proposed D.R. Horton development. The commission rejected the project twice; D.R. Horton has since sued the county. In Ormond Beach, it was flooding concerns in a hurricane-battered Volusia County. In Brevard’s June Park community, 706 petition signatures produced a unanimous Planning and Zoning Board denial before the developer withdrew. In Lake County, commissioners denied the same 79-home Clermont subdivision twice — in November 2025 and again in April 2026 when KB Home returned with a reduced plan. In Manatee County, the Lone Valley project fell to concerns about nearby grocery stores, road capacity, and the pace of growth in a community that is, by all accounts, already growing rapidly. 

At an earlier Manatee County commission meeting on a separate but related housing denial, landowner Marilyn Moran — whose family has owned land in the area for over a century — offered the most direct assessment of what was happening: “Your decision today needs to be based on the evidence and the legal principles at issue, not unsupported, emotional pleas or the screeching of anti-development activists.” 

The commission voted no anyway. 

What the NAHB Model Tells Us 

The NAHB Local Economic Impact Model calculates three phases of economic impact from residential construction: the direct effect of construction activity itself, the ripple effect of construction workers spending their wages locally, and the ongoing annual effect of new residents paying property taxes and participating in the local economy. 

The jobs lost are not abstractions. They are carpenters, plumbers, electricians, roofers, painters, concrete finishers, and the truck drivers, lumber yard workers, hardware store clerks, and restaurant owners who depend on their paychecks. They are the kinds of jobs — blue-collar, trade-based, family-sustaining — that politicians across the spectrum claim to champion. 

There is also a second table that rarely gets discussed: the ongoing annual economic loss. Once those homes go unbuilt, thousands of jobs that should exist every year — generated by property tax revenue, resident spending, and local economic participation — also disappear. Permanently. 

A Statewide Pattern With a Local Address 

These five cases are not outliers. They are the visible tip of a statewide pattern documented repeatedly in Florida housing research. A 2024 report by the Florida Office of Program Policy Analysis found that local opposition to development is one of the primary drivers of housing unaffordability. 

The data connecting anti-growth sentiment to poverty, stagnant wages, and housing unaffordability is no longer theoretical. It is documented. It is measurable. It has a price — one paid not by the people who show up to commission meetings, but by the people who can never afford to. 

Next time someone hands a commissioner a petition against a housing development, someone should hand the commissioner these tables. 

Breeze Airways dropped 18 routes in 17 months. In about half (or more) of them, public money was involved. Now it’s coming to TLH. Buckle up. 

Special Investigation by Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida 

The Tallahassee City Commission was practically giddy. 

A shiny new airline named Breeze. Nonstop flights to Fort Lauderdale and Raleigh-Durham. Affordable fares. A 137-seat Airbus A220-300 — described, without apparent irony, as a “Goldilocks-size” plane for Tallahassee’s market. 

What could go wrong? 

Quite a bit, as it turns out. Red Tape Florida has meticulously researched every route Breeze Airways has dropped since January 2025 — 18 in total — and what we found should give Tallahassee taxpayers serious pause before the confetti hits the floor on July 2. 

The deal the city struck is structured as a minimum revenue guarantee: if Breeze’s Fort Lauderdale and Raleigh-Durham routes don’t generate $3 million over two years, Tallahassee taxpayers pay the difference. Half comes from airport funds. Half from community incentives. It’s the aviation equivalent of a co-signer — and Breeze has left a lot of co-signers holding the bag. 

Breeze’s Business Model, Decoded 

Breeze Airways was founded in 2021 by David Neeleman, the airline entrepreneur behind JetBlue, WestJet, and Azul. The pitch is elegant: connect underserved secondary airports with nonstop service, bypass the hubs, keep costs lean. Five years in, Breeze has carried 16 million passengers and calls itself the fastest-growing airline in America. 

It is also, Red Tape Florida has found, extraordinarily good at landing in communities carrying public incentive money. What is harder to prove is precisely how much those incentives influence Breeze’s decisions. What is clear is that public dollars appear repeatedly in the story of Breeze’s expansion — and in many of the routes it later abandoned. 

In the 17 months between January 2025 and May 2026, Breeze dropped 18 domestic routes. RTF examined every one of them. 

The findings were striking: 

• 8 routes involved confirmed public incentives, subsidies, revenue guarantees, fee waivers, or community backstops. 

• 5 more originated at airports with formal airline incentive programs, though Breeze-specific participation requires public records confirmation. 

• 5 could not be confirmed or ruled out after extensive research. 

One or two examples would be anecdotal. Eight confirmed examples and five more under investigation begin to look like a pattern. 

The Strongest Examples 

The clearest case came from Huntsville, Alabama. The City of Huntsville signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Breeze paying $10,000 per month in base incentive payments, with an additional $10,000 per month bonus specifically designated for flying to Los Angeles. The MOU ran 24 months. The LAX route dropped in September 2025. The city then renewed its MOU with Breeze — this time without LAX as a destination. The city paid Breeze to fly to Los Angeles. When the check stopped, so did the flight. 

In Greenville-Spartanburg, the airport CEO appeared before Spartanburg City Council in September 2024 specifically requesting $275,000 to fulfill a backstop agreement with Breeze Airways. He told the council the total minimum annual guarantee required to get Breeze to launch was $1.5 million. The route launched May 2024. It ended September 2025. Sixteen months. 

Ohio’s economic development agency, JobsOhio, operates a $10 million annual Air Service Restoration Program providing short-term revenue guarantee incentives to airlines. JobsOhio’s own press release for the Breeze inaugural LAX flight names the program as the vehicle that made the route possible. The Akron-Canton airport CEO said at launch: “It’s our commitment, with partners like Breeze and JobsOhio — who offer the air services incentive program that brought Breeze here.” The route launched May 2024 and ended August 2025. It has not returned. 

At the inaugural press conference announcing Breeze service to Jacksonville in 2022, Mayor Lenny Curry announced he was asking City Council for $1 million in incentives and marketing assistance. The council approved it in May 2022. The Jacksonville-Westchester route ran four years before ending in May 2026. 

RTF’s complete route-by-route analysis, including source documents and links, is available here. 

What the Counterexamples Tell Us 

Not every route fit the theory. 

Raleigh-Durham to Los Angeles ended in January 2026 despite an 82.1% load factor and no confirmed incentive involvement. That appears to have been a straightforward competitive decision: Breeze held just 7.8% of the RDU-LAX market against Delta’s 50.6% and American’s 41.4%. Breeze subsequently named RDU as an operating base and launched new California service to Orange County — a far less competitive market than LAX. 

But exceptions do not erase the broader pattern. Public incentives appeared repeatedly in markets Breeze entered and repeatedly in routes Breeze later abandoned. 

Tallahassee’s Turn 

Tallahassee has seen this movie before. 

JetBlue arrived with fanfare in 2022 and left in October 2024, citing underperformance. Silver Airways filed for bankruptcy and stopped all operations in June 2025. The city is now down to four American Airlines routes and a single Delta route — a skeleton crew for the capital of the third most populous state in America. 

Into this void flies Breeze, which described Tallahassee as a market that has “really struggled for kind of low-cost or value service” — and which said it thinks it is “the perfect carrier for that.” 

The city has committed $3 million in minimum revenue guarantees to make Breeze feel welcome. Tallahassee taxpayers are effectively co-signing Breeze’s launch. If the routes underperform, the city covers the difference. Half comes from airport funds. Half from community incentives. 

The routes begin July 2. 

The incentive window is two years. 

Red Tape Florida will be watching the calendar. 

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.