Byron Donalds says hotel taxes should be used for infrastructure

Ryan Gillespie, Orlando Sentinel on Sep 17, 2026

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ORLANDO, Fla. — Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds said Thursday he supports broadening the uses of hotel taxes in Florida, specifically to allow the levy on room nights and short-term rental stays to be spent on transportation and infrastructure projects.

While both he and his Democratic opponent David Jolly have said they support reform, Donalds said he prefers counties maintain control of the funds.

Jolly has said counties should be able to use some tourist tax funds locally, but he also wants those levies to help pay for statewide programs such as a catastrophic insurance fund to cover all hurricane and natural disaster losses.

Donalds said he disagrees with what he described as a state takeover of the lucrative tax and said he wants to empower local governments.

“Jolly’s insurance proposal is to take that money … that’s a non-starter,” Donalds said. “We want to look at uses. Make sure the tourism industries are getting what they need while also making sure our infrastructure is also keeping up.”

Donalds was visiting Orlando on Thursday for a question-and-answer session with voters at the National Entrepreneur Center at the Fashion Square Mall, where he held a wide-ranging discussion touching on topics like regulating artificial intelligence, AI data centers and school choice.

In Orange County, where the economy is dominated by tourism, officials expect Tourist Development Tax collections to top $400 million this year, a record high.

But state law restricts the tax’s use to tourism marketing or to other ventures that expand tourism — so it has been spent to expand the Orange County Convention Center and build the Kia Center and the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.

In recent years, some residents have pushed for expanded uses of the tax, potentially on transportation, workforce housing, law enforcement or other services strained by tens of millions of annual visitors but funded by local taxpayers.

A citizens task force last month recommended Orange County more aggressively lobby the state for the authority to use the money in other ways.

Asked by the Orlando Sentinel about that discussion, Donalds said he wants to work with local governments and the tourism industry to do that.

“What I’ve said when I’ve talked to restaurant, lodging and that industry, is we want to make sure that, yes, those dollars are being used for tourism, which is how it was designed,” he said. He added there should be a “concrete agreement” that those dollars are being used as intended.

But if such levies are raking in hundreds of millions, he said, “maybe we need to look at decreasing that tax or allowing for additional uses for road construction and things like that.”

He cautioned that “if there’s room to do some of the other key things, especially around infrastructure, then let’s have an agreement to do that.”

In a previous interview with the Sentinel, Jolly said he too supports broadening uses of the tax.

He said that in addition to the insurance fund, he’s interested in using the money to pay for a 30% pay increase for teachers. Potentially, counties could use some of the remaining money on local issues like transportation and workforce housing.

“We don’t have a crisis of convention centers, we have a crisis of teacher pay, we have a crisis of homeowner’s insurance,” Jolly said.

Amid Donalds’ criticism Thursday of Jolly’s hurricane fund proposal, Jolly’s campaign sent out a release attacking what it called Donalds’ “lie” about an “invented $1,000 ‘hurricane tax.'”

Donalds’ campaign has used the “hurricane tax” language in a TV spot, but Jolly’s campaign said the Florida State University report cited in the ad did not actually review his proposal for a hurricane fund, which it said has the potential to cut homeowners insurance costs by 60% to 70%.

The hurricane fund “does not include an additional $1,000 tax for homeowners,” he said earlier this week, according to the Florida Phoenix. “No governor is going to do that.”

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