Give government a refresher course on why tourism is vital

A government attitude problem could harm taxpayers. The ugly attitude is that tourists are a nuisance and cost us money. Elected officials sometimes say almost that.

What if we complained that a mushrooming financial industry that pours money into our economy is filling offices that should be left to other businesses, and that the newcomers are driving up prices of homes and the cost of living? What if we posted ‘Not Welcome’ signs?

We haven’t been foolish enough to do that for glittering new industries, but for decades some officials have treated our paying guests that way: we love their money but we resent their presence.

That’s why Miami Beach officials are talking seriously about a moratorium on hotel rooms. And it’s why a county commissioner last week led a successful drive not to use taxes for transit linking the airport and seaport on grounds that tourists would be prime beneficiaries.

I am not making either of those up. They are both very real, prejudices trumping sanity.

When county Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins asked the Transportation Planning Organization last week to vote merely to “study the feasibility of implementing direct transit service connecting Miami International Airport with PortMiami,” Commissioner Eileen Higgins led a drive to study it only if no tax monies would be involved because she didn’t want to spend money to benefit tourists.

“As we know,” she told the organization’s board, “our job today is to move our workers and our residents – particularly low-income folks – to jobs and schools and health centers… also to get choice riders off the road and out of the cars so maybe we’ll have a little less traffic. So I have great issues for using public money to basically get tourists from one spot to another, particularly when they’re not spending money in our county, right, when they’re landing at the airport” and going to cruise ships.

Yet Ms. Higgins also said that a train between the ports would cross Miami’s most populous area. There was no hint that transit would not have stops between those two economic engines that have at least 40,000 workers entering them daily, mostly county residents. If they take transit to work they would be exiting cars. So could other county residents, thus reducing downtown traffic.

In an area that has said for years that adding vital transit to link the ports would be a no-brainer, how could anyone miss the value of a connection? 

You can only miss it if you’re worried about tourists benefitting. It’s akin to Miami Beach for years opposing a transit link to Miami because officials didn’t want “those people” coming into their city – you can fill in the ethnic groups they meant but never named.

The vote to study transit between the airport and seaport finally passed, but only after a change made sure that either the airport or the seaport must pay for it from proprietary funds – money commissioners can’t touch. “Otherwise,” Commissioner Higgins said, “I would have to vote against this item without that amendment.”

Ms. Higgins was telling the ports to ‘build your own damn transit.’ But she didn’t say that later in the meeting when she pushed forward her very logical plan for transit linking Florida International University in West Dade with downtown, another long-time need. 

She didn’t tell FIU to ‘build your own damn transit’ because she knows that thousands of people who each day drive east-west could use transit. But they aren’t tourists. 

So, why is tourism a bad word?

It can’t be because its 146,100 Miami-Dade workers are one in every nine members of our labor force, most of whom pay taxes here and can vote for commissioners. 

It can’t be because visitors last fiscal year fed $20.2 billion into the county’s economy. That money helps pay bills for far more than the people on visitor industry payrolls. Those revenues fuel local businesses. 

Imagine Miami-Dade’s sputtering economy without visitor spinoff dollars.

For certain, tourism was no bad word when the county and cities banked last fiscal year well above $340 million that tourists paid into seven sales and resort taxes. Those include $43.9 million in a homeless tax that the rest of us would pay if visitors didn’t, and $23.8 million for our professional sports that residents also enjoy.

Okay, there truly are a lot of visitors, 26.7 million last year. But if they feel we don’t want them, millions who fly to the airport and take cruise ships could use other ports. If we don’t make people welcome, others will.

Everyone in Florida wants visitors. They cater to them. They make visiting easy. 

We, on the other hand, say millions of them can take taxis and Ubers through the most congested part of Miami to and from ships because they don’t deserve transit. Instead, let them just keep congesting our downtown streets. 

Maybe that shortsighted attitude is because few elected officials came from the visitor industry. 

Or maybe it’s because education directed to Miamians on tourism’s value by the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau is less visible. The bureau, aware of the unwarranted stigma of tourism, used to advertise why visitors mean money to all of us. 

But old messages can be forgotten. A refresher course on what our visitors mean to all of us is overdue in government.