An Introduction to Budget Turkeys and the Sprinkle List

About the Budget Turkey Watch Report

The Budget Turkey Watch report is Florida TaxWatch's annual review of Florida's upcoming budget. The report was started in 1983 and promotes oversight and integrity in the state’s budgeting process based on the principle that: because money appropriated by the Legislature belongs to the taxpayers of Florida, the process must be transparent and accountable, and every appropriation should receive deliberation and public scrutiny. The budget review identifies appropriations that circumvent transparency and accountability standards in public budgeting.

Budget Turkeys are items, usually local member projects, placed in individual line-items or accompanying proviso language that are added to the final appropriations bill without being fully scrutinized and subjected to the budget process.

The Budget Turkey label does not signify judgment of a project’s worthiness. Instead, the review focuses on the Florida budget process, and the purpose of the Budget Turkey label is to ensure that all appropriations using public funds receive the deliberation, debate, and accountability they deserve. While a project may be worthwhile, Budget Turkeys tend to serve a limited (not statewide) area, are often not core functions of government, are more appropriately funded with local or private dollars, and can circumvent competitive bidding or selection as well as oversight and accountability.

Florida TaxWatch is not recommending that the Governor veto any specific project on the Budget Turkey list. We are providing this report to assist the Governor in his budget deliberations, recommending that he not only consider the value and efficacy of a project, but also if it meets turkey-criteria, if it addresses a core state government function, and if it was selected through a fair process that promotes the best interest of taxpayers statewide.

A project that circumvents established review and selection processes or has completed the established process but is funded ahead of much higher priority projects (as determined by the selection process);

Appropriations that are inserted in the budget during conference committee meetings, meaning they did not appear in either the final Senate or House budgets;

Appropriations from inappropriate trust funds; duplicative appropriations; and appropriations contingent on legislation that did not pass; and/or

Appropriations that may have been in the House or Senate budget, but were removed by agreement in conference, only to be added back at the last minute through the supplemental appropriation (“sprinkle”) lists.

Monday, June 8, 2026

/ Categories: Research, Budget/Approps, Budget Turkeys

2026 Budget Turkey Watch Report

An analysis of the transparency and accountability of the budget process

Florida TaxWatch has identified 621 Budget Turkeys totaling $829.7 million in the FY2026-27 state budget — appropriations that bypass established review processes, lack competitive selection, or violate the Legislature's own budgeting rules. An additional 484 projects worth $441.1 million, while not meeting the strict Budget Turkey criteria, warrant close gubernatorial review before the budget takes effect.

The backdrop makes these findings particularly striking. The Legislature opened the 2026 session under a mandate for austerity, with state economists projecting future General Revenue shortfalls. For the second consecutive year, lawmakers failed to pass a budget within the 60-day regular session — one of six special sessions held over the past two years — ultimately producing a $114.7 billion spending plan only after an $1.4 billion gap between the House and Senate chambers was resolved. Yet despite the rhetoric of fiscal restraint, legislators submitted more than 5,600 member project requests totaling $12.5 billion — surpassing last year's record of 5,100 requests worth $11.7 billion. Nearly 2,000 of those projects, worth more than $2.7 billion, were ultimately funded. With 160 members in the Legislature, that averages to 12.5 projects and $16.7 million per legislator and extends a five-year run in which approximately $14 billion in member projects have been appropriated.

Budget Turkeys appear across nearly every area of the budget where formal review processes exist. In higher education construction, 11 university projects ($76.8 million) and 11 college projects ($71.7 million) received funding despite not appearing on the statutorily required priority lists — while some of the highest-ranked projects went unfunded. Water quality fared no better: for the second year in a row, the Legislature earmarked all $380 million in Water Quality Improvement Grant Program funding for 344 individual member projects, using the implementing bill to override the competitive, criteria-driven process the Legislature itself created. Local parks, historic preservation, cultural facilities, and library construction all followed the same pattern — established grant programs were underfunded or bypassed entirely while member-requested projects were funded in their place. Local transportation projects, historically flagged as Budget Turkeys in their entirety, were again funded overwhelmingly through the State Transportation Trust Fund rather than General Revenue, undermining the comprehensively planned DOT Work Program.

Beyond the formal Budget Turkey designation, hundreds of additional projects in housing and community development, law enforcement, fire service, emergency management, education, and workforce development — totaling $441.1 million — received appropriations through line-items with no formal selection criteria, no competitive ranking, and limited accountability for outcomes.

Florida TaxWatch urges the Governor to exercise his veto authority with these findings in mind, evaluating each flagged project not only for merit but for its alignment with core state government functions, the relative capacity of the recipient to fund the project locally, and whether it adhered to sound budgeting practices. Beyond veto deliberations, the Legislature must address the structural conditions that produce this outcome year after year. Florida TaxWatch recommends that the Legislature establish statutory competitive selection processes for member projects in transportation, housing, law enforcement, fire service, and emergency management; that it adhere to the Water Quality Improvement Grant Program process it enacted; that it discontinue or sharply curtail the use of supplemental "sprinkle list" appropriations; and that it enact follow-up audit requirements for randomly selected appropriations projects — a reform the House has proposed for three consecutive sessions and the Senate has yet to adopt.

Since 1983, Florida TaxWatch has published the Budget Turkey Watch Report to promote transparency, accountability, and integrity in the appropriations process. In a year defined by calls for spending discipline, the gap between that stated priority and the actual budget has rarely been wider.

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