A record level of parochial pork-barrel spending in Florida’s new $117.5 billion state budget shows that the annual practice of paying for thousands of “member projects” is out of hand.
Florida TaxWatch made that declaration Wednesday as the business-backed policy research group released its annual “Turkey Watch” report, flagging nearly $1 billion in questionable spending throughout the state that Gov. Ron DeSantis should consider vetoing ($854.6 million in 450 separate projects, to be exact).
The projects range from a $1 million expansion of the Bay of Pigs-Brigade 2506 Museum and Library in Miami’s Little Havana to $500,000 for an outdoor music venue at Orlando’s Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.
The fattest turkey of all on the TaxWatch list is $39 million for the University of Florida to acquire nearly 3,000 acres of land west of Gainesville for a golf course and other improvements. Taxpayers would never know the project’s true purpose: It appears in the education part of the budget as the “Hickory Sink Strategic Ecosystem.”
Every community has constituencies that want some of this money, and TaxWatch emphasized it was not doubting the worthiness of projects. They range from museums to road repairs to suicide prevention to security at Holocaust centers.
Rather, TaxWatch said, such spending arbitrarily circumvents public review or a state agency’s funding criteria. Many projects sprang to life in the final hours of the legislative session in so-called “sprinkle lists, last-minute additions to the budget blessed by the obvious favoritism of a few powerful lawmakers in a back room of the Capitol.
TaxWatch is right about one thing: The Florida Legislature needs all the scrutiny it can get.
Transportation is an area where lawmakers were especially greedy, including swiping $250 million from a previously approved five-year road program, which caught its attention. The group urged DeSantis to scrutinize dozens of projects it said were already getting state money but which surfaced again, in sprinkle lists, to get a second helping.
One such project, for $500,000, is for Fort Lauderdale to make resiliency and traffic improvements on part of Breakers Avenue on the city’s beachfront.
This annual review gives TaxWatch a measure of relevance, as its “turkey watch” has long been vilified as a gimmick by legislative leaders in both parties for challenging the right of legislators to decide the best ways to bring money back to their districts.
The organization is supported by some of Florida’s biggest corporate interests, such as Publix, FPL, Lykes Bros., TECO and the Florida Retail Federation.
The group said its own members are not spared scrutiny, but one project that avoided the “turkey” tag is $3 million for the Lemieux Center for Public Policy at Palm Beach Atlantic University, named for former U.S. Sen. George Lemieux at a small, private Christian school.
Lemieux, a lawyer, is immediate past chairman of the TaxWatch board.
TaxWatch said it scrutinizes spending at public colleges and universities, which have well-established funding formulas, and that private schools do not.
Every year TaxWatch rolls out another long list of turkeys, and every year the political favoritism seems more blatant and more expensive.
The numbers don’t lie. Project requests totaled more than 2,700 this year and 1,600 were funded, equal to 40 projects for each of 40 state senators.
TaxWatch said the state now pays for firehouses and fire trucks in cities all over the state, and the number of requests alone is far too great for any systematic review.
Once again, a prime culprit appears to be term limits, approved by Florida voters in 1992.
TaxWatch officials said inexperienced lawmakers unquestioningly follow their leaders and perpetuate a practice that, however questionable, is widely accepted by members in both parties.
“It’s the slow drip of culture change,” said TaxWatch executive vice president Jeff Kottkamp, a former lieutenant governor and House member. “We’re starting to get to the point where members don’t know any different.”
TaxWatch is urging DeSantis to consider vetoing $400,000 to close the “kosher meal gap” in Broward, a $500,000 grant for a veterans’ suicide prevention program in Palm Beach County, and a $100,000 analysis of the life cycle of gas-powered leaf blowers by the Department of Environmental Protection.
The debate over who is best to judge a community’s needs will never end. But the time is long past due for the Legislature to restore some fiscal sanity and public accountability to these annual handouts, which have approached $3 billion in each of the past three years.
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