by Ryan Smart, Florida Springs Council
Even during the best of times, the Florida Legislature is impenetrable and opaque to the average Floridian. This is particularly true of the process to create and pass a state budget, the only thing the Legislature is required to do each year.
Disagreements between the Senate and House over the budget are handed off to a “conference committee” composed of a handful of Legislators from each chamber handpicked by leadership. Whatever the conferees come up in their private negotiations, that isn’t vetoed by the Governor, becomes the budget. Those decisions, and the policies tied to them, impact the lives of over 23 million Floridians.
These are certainly not the best of times. For the second year in a row, the Florida Senate and House were unable to pass a budget during the sixty-day Legislative Session. This year, they were forced to come back during “Special Session” to pass a budget. What’s so “special” about Special Session? First, it is held outside of regular Session dates with taxpayers footing the bill for the additional cost. Second, it is limited to specific issues, like passing a budget, reforming property taxes, or building a concentration camp in the Everglades. Third, it makes it nearly impossible for anyone but the most connected lobbyists and wealthy donors to have any say over how our tax dollars are spent.
The 2026-2027 Florida state budget, totaling over $114 billion of our money, was decided behind closed doors, without any public input, over Memorial Day Weekend. The only committee meeting on the final budget proposal was held at 10:45 pm on the Sunday night before Memorial Day. No one from the public was recognized to speak. And to no one’s surprise, the outcome of the budget was as flawed as the process to create it.
I work on environmental issues in the Florida Legislature, so that’s what I’ll be focusing on. But the same sad story—public needs being sacrificed for private wants—is true across education, healthcare, and many other issues that Floridians care about deeply.
Overall, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s budget is being slashed to $2.45 billion, a nearly 40% cut to state environmental programs when compared to 2022. That’s $1.7 billion in just the next year that will not be used to protect forests and wildlife corridors; restore springs, rivers, and estuaries; fund water quality and water supply projects; or ensure that our permitting and regulatory systems are properly staffed and functioning. All while development runs wild across the state, critical ecosystems and habitats are paved over, and our springs run dry, rivers fill with algae, and endangered species perish.
Looking at individual programs and line items, the most disappointing parts of the 2026-27 budget are the things that are conspicuously absent. Despite a state law requiring the Florida Forever program receive a minimum of $100 million a year, for the first time in over a decade, Florida’s premier land conservation program received no new funding in the budget. (Florida Forever should receive more than a billion dollars a year, if the Legislature cared about voters and the constitution, but that’s another story.) That means no funding to purchase new lands for state parks, state forests, or public hunting lands. No funding to buy irreplaceable lands at risk of being bulldozed and development. No funding to protect critical watersheds or habitat for endangered species.
To add insult to injury, the Florida Legislature is clawing-back every single remaining dollar from the Florida Wildlife Corridor funding approved unanimously only a few years ago. The vast majority of this funding, $225 million, is being transferred to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to purchase agricultural easements that temporarily prevent development, but offer no public access, no public recreational opportunities, and dubious environmental benefits. The remaining funds are prioritized to bailout bad investments by wealthy coastal property owners in Okaloosa County, possibly including Robert Guidry, the same Louisiana real estate developer who received more than $80 million of our tax dollars for a measly four acres of undevelopable sand after similar language appeared in the 2025-26 budget. Only after the bailouts of wealthy landowners across the state, does any funding trickle down for land conservation to benefit Floridians or our environment.
The picture for water restoration funding is nearly as bleak as it is for land conservation. Although the Everglades was allocated more than $800 million next year, most of this funding will go to pipes, pumps, and construction projects with limited environmental benefits. Springs funding was maintained at a paltry $50 million which is so insufficient that it only guarantees future degradation. The Apalachicola River, Indian River Lagoon, Biscayne Bay, and Florida Keys received even less. Restoring the Ocklawaha River, the most important environmental project in Florida, received not a cent.
Most disappointingly, the Legislature raided the Florida Water Quality Improvement Grant Program, enacted only a few years ago to stop the ineffective and wasteful practice of picking water projects based on pork-barrel politics instead of science and the benefit to taxpayers. Despite a requirement in state law that these funds be distributed to the most effective and beneficial projects, the Florida Legislature is redirecting funds to projects based on partisan politics, rewarding political allies and big donors with hundreds of millions of dollars of your hard earned money.
The budget is the most clear statement of our elected officials priorities. For the current class of elected officials, that priority is rewarding campaign donors with your tax dollars at the expense of our environment and the public good. If that is not your priority, I encourage you to vote this November.