At the federal level, wasteful spending is called “pork barrels,” but in Florida it is called “Turkey Project.”
Since 1983, Florida Tax Watch has released an annual budget turkey clock report that analyzes some of the state’s budget and spending waste supported by lawmakers.
This year’s report describes Florida’s $115.1 billion budget and 1,600 local member projects totaling over $2 billion.
The group report identifies a 238-year-old budget totaling $413.5 million (called “Budget Turkey”) that does not follow established review procedures, and flags an additional $799.5 million on projects worthy of enhanced executive reviews.
It’s just to show how much spending has increased. In 2016 there were 550 such projects worth less than $400 million. In recent years, these numbers have almost tripled, with funds increasing seven times. Taxwatch says nothing has caused the trend in member projects. “In fact, there could be a debate that they (the lawmakers) have driven a surge,” the group said.
With this session alone, local member projects are still thriving. Members of the House and Senate submitted more than 5,100 project requests. TaxWatch points out that over the past nine years, $14 billion year marks have been piloted by local entities. Member projects expenditures skyrocketed from 400,000,020 16 to about 3,000,000,000,000,000 per year, despite the aim of curbing the rules.
“It wasn’t necessarily something like this. This explosion on this explosive project was requested and funded, but despite efforts to instill transparency, review and deliberation in these validity, in 2017, it established rules for the “supplementary project,” which was advocated by then-speaker Richard Kolquran.
What’s coming next? Most analysts believe that, like Gov. Desantis did every year, he would reject millions of people on this year’s budget.
TaxWatch says their reports are rooted in the principle that taxpayer dollars must be allocated transparently and deliberatively.
