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The term used to describe wasteful spending in the nation’s capital is “pork barrel spending,” but in Florida it’s called the “turkey project.”
For the past 40 years, Florida TaxWatch has published an annual report identifying some of the areas where turkey projects are taking place.
Florida TaxWatch identified 621 items on this year’s list that cost Florida taxpayers approximately $830 million.
“These are expenditures that circumvent or violate established budget procedures and legislative and public oversight,” the report states.
A cleaner version is:
TaxWatch leadership contends that most of these projects involve issues that should be decided by local governments, not state legislatures.
Despite Republicans controlling Florida’s House and Senate and repeatedly calling for a slimmer budget, TaxWatch says elected officials have approved more local projects than ever before.
Here’s some of the breakdown from TaxWatch:
Members of the House and Senate have submitted more than 5,600 project requests totaling $12.5 billion, an average of 35 requests and $78 million per member. These totals exceed last year’s total of 5,100 requests worth $11.7 billion.
The fiscal year 2026-27 budget includes approximately 2,000 local member projects worth $2.7 billion. Nearly all Congressional projects in the budget were requested by both House members and senators, so the average senator received funding for approximately 45 projects (worth $60 million) and the average House member received funding for 15 projects (worth $20 million).
Where do these low-budget turkeys come from?
Construction of higher education. On the TaxWatch list, 11 university projects ($76.8 million) and 11 university projects ($71.7 million) received funding despite not being on the legally required priority list. Meanwhile, some of the top projects did not receive funding.
No improvement in water quality was observed. For the second year in a row, Congress allocated all $380 million in Water Quality Improvement Grant Program funds to 344 individual member projects, using an implementing bill that overrode a competitive, standards-based process that Congress itself created.
Wasteful spending on local parks, historic preservation, cultural facilities, library construction, and local transportation projects.
Millions of dollars in public funds were spent with no formal selection criteria, no competitive rankings, and limited accountability for results, TaxWatch found.
The total amount will reach $441.1 million, as well as hundreds of additional projects in housing and community development, law enforcement, fire protection, emergency management, education, workforce development, and more.
Regarding the state’s long-term fiscal outlook, TaxWatch researchers say that if the number of wasteful items continues to increase, the state will face a budget shortfall.
“Many in the Florida Legislature have rightly criticized local governments for their rapid property tax and budget growth and wasteful and inefficient spending,” an excerpt from the report reads. “Yet, lawmakers continue to request and fund billions of dollars for projects back in their districts to reward local governments that may not adequately protect taxpayers. And while many of these projects are worthwhile, many more are not priorities or even essential.”
