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VisitFlorida, the state’s public private tourism marketing arm, is about to be at the center of one of the biggest fights in the 2020 legislative session.

Lawmakers have had the agency in their sights for at least three years after some questionable spending, but there’s a new wrinkle this year.

VisitFlordia spent millions spent on a cooking show and a fishing show.

Then another million on a ‘Sexy Beaches’ video featuring hip hop star Pitbull.

The agency originally angered lawmakers by refusing to tell them how much they spent on those promotions.

A showdown between the House and Senate this past spring threatened to close the agency forever.

Then the Governor personally asked for a one year reprieve.

The House Speaker gave in.

“So that he would have the opportunity to make an assessment of his own of how unnecessary it is,” said House Speaker Jose Oliva in April.

Now looking forward to the 2020 session, the Governor will be asking to keep the agency alive.

“It’s interesting, and the Speaker and I are very philosophically aligned and I mean, I was not necessarily sold on it coming in, but as they rate these things, that’s one of the few economic development things that gets rated as being positive,” said DeSantis.

State Senator Tom Lee believes the Senate will continue to fight for the tourism promoting agency.

“I think it’s pretty important to the Senate,” said LEe.

As a compromise to keep Visit Florida alive for one more year, lawmakers agreed to kill the agency June 13th.

This week, two bills were filed to extend Visit Florida’s life until October 2028.

“But I suspect that’s all gonna get caught up in the horse trading that takes place late in the session,” said Lee.

But that means the House has to actually pass something it only grudgingly agreed to in the 2019 session.

In budget hearings last week, state lawmakers were asked to set aside $50 million for VisitFlorida.

It’s the same amount the agency got this year, but the Governor told us Monday that the number was still in flux.