Florida TaxWatch identifies $416 million in ‘Budget Turkeys’ for FY 2025-26

A day after the Florida Legislature approved a $115.1 billion state budget, Florida TaxWatch released its annual “Turkey Watch Report” on Tuesday, identifying 242 projects totaling $416.1 million that its members believe Gov. Ron DeSantis should veto.

The Tallahassee nonprofit lists $800 million in additional projects that “merit extra scrutiny.”

Dominic Calabro, Florida TaxWatch’s longtime president and CEO, acknowledged at the beginning of a press conference held at the organization’s office that the 105 day-long session was “one of the most unique sessions” that he’s observed in more than four decades with the organization.

That’s primary because of the divisive battles between Gov. DeSantis and House Republicans, including Speaker Daniel Perez. But Calabro added that “a lot of very, very, good productive things were accomplished on the behalf of the hardworking taxpayers of Florida.”

One of those wins as far as TaxWatch goes was the elimination by lawmakers in the budget of the business rent tax, which is projected to reduce state revenues by nearly $905 million. Florida is the only state that has had such a tax.

TaxWatch officials define a budget turkey as a project that circumvents the regular review and selection process, such as appropriations inserted in the budget during conference committee meetings that originally did not appear in the final House or Senate budgets.

Appropriations that may have originally been in the House or Senate budgets that were initially removed by agreement in conference but ultimately listed back via “sprinkle” lists — goodies including member projects added late in the budget process — also qualify.

TaxWatch turkeys also tend to serve local areas and not the entire state, and “are often not core functions of state government” that would be more appropriately funded with local and private donors, said former Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp, Florida TaxWatch’s executive vice president and general counsel.

Member projects

Kurt Wenner, Florida TaxWatch’s senior vice president for research, said that while the 2025 legislative session was atypical in that it took more than 100 days to complete and actually reduces spending from existing levels, the budget continues to contain “a lot” of member projects, which are appropriations that individual lawmaker submits for their local districts.

The report says that the FY 2025-2026 budget includes more than 1,600 local member projects worth more than $2 billion. All told, House and Senate members submitted more than 5,100 project requests totaling $11.7 billion, an average of 32 projects per lawmaker.

The report lists 18 local parks (totaling $13.2 million) as turkeys because they didn’t go through the competitive grant programs administered by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which allow local governments to apply for financial assistance to develop and/or acquire land for public outdoor recreational use.

It lists three member projects that were not identified in either the House nor the Senate’s budgets but were added during the budget conference, including $8.5 million for Veteran, Military Families & First Responder Service Complexes at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

The new budget, which will move to DeSantis desk for consideration (and potential vetoes), does nothing specific on property taxes — not yet, anyhow. The legislation passed on Monday night includes nearly $1 million for a study of property tax reduction proposals, and how they could affect local governments.

And a select House committee studying the potential for property taxes has already been meeting and will continue to do so throughout the year. The goal is likely to result in legislators approving a constitutional amendment on cutting property taxes going before the voters in November 2026.

Florida TaxWatch also intends to study the issue.

“We’ll be having a workgroup looking at different ways of offering structural changes for property tax reform that are fair, comport with our due process and equal protection under the law, and really are sustainable and something that we can afford over a long time period of time, and still respect the functions of supporting our local governments in their core functions of police, fire, healthcare, and other things like that,” Calabro said.

DeSantis is in Paris and has not immediately responded to the newly passed budget. He has just two weeks to sign it, but he also has line-item veto power. A year ago he vetoed nearly $1 billion in the state’s $116.5 billion state budget.

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