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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