Fla. watchdog: $15M in ‘turkeys’
TALLAHASSEE (AP) – A state financial watchdog group has recommended that only $15 million in spending “turkeys” get the veto ax Wednesday, when Gov. Charlie Crist says he’ll sign the state’s next budget into law.
That’s the lowest amount since 2003 when Florida TaxWatch found no turkeys. While the governor plans to sign the budget, he also can veto line items.
TaxWatch officials on Tuesday cited the state’s dire financial condition as a key reason they were able to identify only 10 turkeys in the tight $66.5 billion budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1.
Turkeys, as defined by the nonpartisan research organization, include items put into the budget by circumventing established procedures. An item also may be a turkey if it provides a noncompetitive benefit for a limited special interest or part of the state, or failed to get public review and debate.
That largely procedural approach has resulted in a turkey list that includes money for Goodwill Industries of South Florida, the Diabetes Research Institute, Task Force on African American History, Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, Hillsborough Association of Retarded Citizens, South Florida Charter Autism School and a Holocaust museum in St. Petersburg, Crist’s hometown.
“They tug at your heartstrings,” acknowledged TaxWatch President and CEO Dominic Calabro.
He defended singling out those and other projects, though, because most were added in conference committee. Some items were on the list because they had not been requested either by a state agency or the governor.
Those are the kind of veiled budget decisions that a grand jury criticized last month when it indicted former House Speaker Ray Sansom, R-Destin, on a third-degree felony charge of official misconduct, Calabro said.
Sansom was charged with using his prior position as House budget chairman to funnel millions of dollars to Northwest Florida State College, which later gave him a $110,000 job. He has denied the allegation.
The money Sansom earmarked for the school included $6 million for an airport hangar. That item made last year’s TaxWatch turkey list, but Crist did not veto it. Crist vetoed only $840,000 of $110 million on the 2008 turkey list.
TaxWatch tax research director Kurt Wenner conceded its unlikely such items, like the Florida Holocaust Museum, will be vetoed.
“We fully understand the different considerations the governor has,” Wenner said. “He will veto things that are not on our list.”
Some items legislative leaders put into the budget late in the process seemingly meet TaxWatch’s definition of a turkey but were not listed.
That includes $5 million for the University of South Florida’s Lakeland campus added by Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, in final talks with one of his House counterparts, Rep. David Rivera, R-Miami, after conference committees completed their work.
Calabro said the Lakeland money was added to the university’s overall spending instead of being included in a separate proviso, so – unlike the money for the Northwest Florida hangar – it couldn’t be singled out for a veto without axing South Florida’s entire budget.
“It’s a fiscal cat and mouse game,” Calabro said.
Also not on the list is $250,000 Rivera inserted for the Florida Democracy Conference at Florida International University. Wenner said TaxWatch debated whether to include that item but decided not to because it was in the original House budget plan, and therefore did not bypass the budgeting process.