Thirty five days since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico, and over two weeks since BP announced it would give $25 million to Florida for a marketing campaign, state lawmakers and others in the Sunshine State are expressing frustration about what's the hold-up with that $25 million, which they say is needed now on advertising to inform the rest of the world that Florida's white sand beaches have not been affected by the spill.
Visit Florida, the state’s marketing agency, is using $2 million in state emergency funds to create spot ads, but Republican State Senator Don Gaetz says the state needs to get that BP money. According to the Palm Beach Post, Gaetz said today:
“I’ve been getting confusing answers out of the governor’s office for days. There’s been no response to President Atwater’s letters asking for specificity. Where’s this money? How’s it being deployed?
We’ve not seen a timely response. We’ve not seen an effective response. And jobs are being lost as a consequence."
And Gaetz said he wasn't happy with the Visit Florida ads.
“It’s day 35. We have not had an effective, timely response yet to deploy resources that the state has now…Instead we have two poorly crafted ads that were thrown together it seemed to me at the last minute in somebody’s basement."
