Visit Florida, the state's troubled tourism promotion agency, is grappling with disintegrating partnerships, all stemming from new transparency rules intended to hold it more accountable.

The rules, which were passed by the Florida Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott in June, were drafted at the insistence of House Republicans livid over revelations of multi-million dollar promotional contracts Visit Florida struck largely behind closed doors.

One such contract involved rapper Pitbull, who was given $1 million to promote the state.

Scott was able to secure $76 million for Visit Florida's 2018 fiscal budget. In exchange, House Speaker Richard Corcoran and his deputies moved to require members of Visit Florida's board of directors to disclose their personal incomes.

"We'll continue down that path to force transparency and force accountability, to the extent that they even exist, in the utilization of taxpayer money," Corcoran said of the initiative.

But the financial disclosure requirement is proving to be unacceptable for some of the tourism industry's top tacticians. This week, Florida Attractions Association CEO Bill Lupfer resigned as a member of Visit Florida's board of directors, citing the transparency rules as too burdensome.

In addition, 12 local tourism boards including Visit Orlando and Visit Tampa Bay have chosen to sever ties with Visit Florida. Their largely volunteer boards of directors would have also been required to disclose their finances.

However, 43 other tourism agencies in the state renewed their partnerships.

With the departures, Visit Florida has effectively been thrown into another maelstrom of uncertainty generated by Tallahassee's power brokers.

"It will lead to a number of ripple effects," said Florida policy consultant Trimmel Gomes. "What will be missed in this is the local partnerships and entities getting their spotlight. 'Hey, come to Tampa Bay', 'hey, come to Key West'. That's what's going to be missed in the global marketing of Florida."

Florida welcomed a record 113 million visitors in 2016, with 68 million of them visiting Orlando.

The developments are unlikely to sway the lawmakers behind the reforms, however. As an agency that receives taxpayer funding, they argue Visit Florida and its leaders need to be held to a high standard of transparency.

"They are, in a real sense, on probation," Rep. Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, said during a House floor debate on the rules. "And before we hand a credit card to someone who's misused that credit card, we want to know that it's going to be used properly."

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News 13 digital media producer Ashley Carter contributed to this report.