A few days before Christmas last year, after he was elected to the U.S. Senate but before he’d left Tallahassee for Washington, former Florida Gov. Rick Scott gave a $16 million gift to Orange County. It was a grant to help pay for an extension of Kirkman Road in the county’s International Drive tourism corridor, and it had been pulled from a pot of economic development money known as the “Florida Job Growth Grant Fund.” It was the biggest grant Scott had ever awarded through the fund, which he and the Florida Legislature established in 2017 amid promises to end...