Credit: Inside The MagicFormer Central Florida Tourism Oversight District Administrator Glen Glizean is at the center of controversy again, and this time, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings is out for blood.
Gilzean, a close ally of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, is under fire for using $4 million in taxpayer dollars on student scholarships and career training for election security and eliminating long lines at Orange Country voting facilities during this past election.
Demings is threatening to sue Gilzean if he goes through with his plan to use $2.1 million to create a scholarship program for local students to attend Valencia College and for job training programs. Gilzean claims the money comes from his office saving $5 million during the last election, but Demings claims that money could have been used to lower the wait times for voters in Orange County.
And I can tell you, there are voters who have said to me that through this last election cycle, they did not feel that everything had been done because they were waiting in long lines and not enough locations. … He could have used those funds to fill the gap in the services that were needed to ensure an efficient election cycle.
Remember, the people of Orange County never put him into the office and so he was a temporary placeholder.
Gilzean has been controversial since DeSantis appointed him as the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District administrator, the board that replaced the Reedy Creek Improvement District to oversee the Walt Disney World Resort.
When Gilzean was appointed administrator, he was on the state’s ethics commission. However, receiving a salary from a public board was an ethics violation. Gilzean was critical in dismissing an ethics complaint against DeSantis while on the commission.
Upon Gilzean’s arrival, the CFTOD Board granted him a yearly salary of $400,000, a substantial raise over the Reedy Creek Improvement District’s administrator. DeSantis appointed all of the board members.
During Gilzean’s time overseeing the Walt Disney World Resort, he eliminated all diversity, inclusion, and equity programs and race-based hiring in the District while awarding no-bid legal and maintenance contracts to DeSantis allies.
DeSantis appointed Gilzean as Supervisor of Elections for Orange County in March after Bill Cowles retired. Gilzean will leave the job in January when a new supervisor takes over the heavily Democratic District.
As a parting gift to himself, Gilzean wanted to use $2.1 million for the “Glen Gilzean Orange County Supervisor of Elections Scholarship” and another $1.9 million for Career Source Central Florida.
However, Demings said the county would do everything possible to get that money back, including suing Gilzean. Gilzean has since changed the name of the scholarship to keep it in place, and Valencia College has offered to return the funds.