Gov. Ron DeSantis wielded his veto pen hard on the new state budget, striking roughly $810 million in line items and $1.7 billion overall on his way out the door. But what a Governor leaves in a budget can be as telling as what he takes out.
A review of the Governor’s veto transmittal letter against the spending plan lawmakers sent him turns up a long list of narrowly drawn budget projects, many connected to campaign contributors, lobbyists or favored causes, that survived untouched. Here are some of the most notable, in rough order of size and prominence:
$6 million for a police intelligence platform — The budget includes $6 million for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to expand statewide use of a criminal-intelligence platform built by Peregrine Technologies, a fast-growing data-integration firm co-founded by former Palantir executive Nick Noone, who led Palantir’s U.S. special-operations work. the company raised $250 million this June at a valuation near $6.8 billion. Its software stitches dozens of siloed police, court and jail databases into a single searchable system. The appropriation tracks a request FDLE filed in January to continue broadening the platform’s use among state and local agencies.
$4 million for AI software to screen SNAP benefits — Lawmakers set aside about $4 million for the Department of Children and Families to buy machine-learning software to review and audit eligibility determinations in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The funding is needed because the stakes are high. Florida’s improper-payment error rate currently sits at about 15% and is among the highest in the nation. That number must fall below a 6% threshold or the state will begin shouldering part of the program’s cost in 2028 under a 2025 federal budget law. The budget orders a competitive procurement completed by Sept. 1. A vendor has not yet been selected.
$4 million for police hearing protection — The budget provides $4 million to buy hearing-protection equipment for police officers from Starkey, the hearing-technology company founded and owned by Bill Austin, a Minnesota billionaire worth an estimated $3.1 billion. It is the third straight budget to steer money to Starkey products, after $2 million in each of the prior two years. Austin gave $50,000 to House Speaker Danny Perez’s political committee the day before this year’s Legislative Session convened, state campaign-finance records show.
$4 million for a garbage-to-gas project — The budget includes $4 million for a gasification project led by ReaSYN Technologies, a Miami startup incorporated in June 2024 that quickly became a major donor to the state’s top Republican leaders, including $100,000 apiece given to political committees controlled by DeSantis and Perez, and $150,000 to one backing Senate President Ben Albritton, state campaign-finance records show. The company had already collected about $5 million in earlier state support, including a $3 million rural-infrastructure grant, for a pilot at a Putnam County landfill.
$3 million for athletic fields at a Jacksonville charter school — The budget includes $3 million to install athletic fields at Jacksonville Classical Academy, a Hillsdale-affiliated charter school whose board is chaired by apartment developer John Rood, chairman of The Vestcor Companies and a former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas. Rood sat on DeSantis’s national finance committee and was reappointed by the Governor to the Florida Prepaid College Board. He and Vestcor have been longtime contributors to DeSantis’s political committee.
$725,000 for anti-communism curriculum — The budget keeps $725,000 to develop “history of communism” curriculum materials for Florida public schools, work that records indicate would go to eSpired, the company behind the “Learn Our History” educational products branded by former Arkansas Governor and current U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who has collected fees from the firm. An affiliated entity, Learn Our History LLC, contributed to legislative leaders in the weeks before the Session, state campaign-finance records show. The enrolled figure is well below the roughly $1.45 million originally sought, and a state mandate now requires the coursework in public schools this Fall.
$675,000 to defend the 2021 social media law — The budget provides $675,000 to keep paying the law firm Cooper & Kirk, a prominent Washington firm that has represented the state and Republican causes in a string of high-profile cases, to defend Florida’s 2021 social media law (SB 7072). The law bars large platforms from deplatforming political candidates and has been challenged for years by the tech-industry group NetChoice, in litigation that reached the U.S. Supreme Court and was returned to the lower courts.
$500,000 for an anti-abortion pregnancy hotline — The budget includes $500,000 for a hotline run by Human Coalition, a Texas-based anti-abortion organization that pioneered the use of search ads and online targeting to reach women searching for abortion services and steer them toward anti-abortion pregnancy centers, as a 2022 New York Times investigation documented.
$500,000 to test wastewater for drugs and explosives — The budget routes $500,000 through the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for a grant program letting local police test municipal wastewater for narcotics and explosives. The idea was pitched by Stercus Bioanalytics, a wastewater surveillance vendor whose parent company retained former U.S. Attorney General William Barr as a Washington lobbyist. Backers, including Senate President Albritton’s office, say any contract would be competitively bid and frame the program around drug-lab detection and officer safety.
$5 million for a new I-75 interchange — The budget includes $5 million for the Fort Hamer Road interchange, a long-planned project to add an Interstate-75 connection in fast-growing eastern Manatee County. The interchange would serve the Parrish area around North River Ranch, the 2,600-acre community being developed by Pat Neal’s Neal Land & Neighborhoods, which is itself building the Fort Hamer Road segments that feed it. Neal is a longtime Republican contributor.
$5 million to widen a Polk County road — The budget provides $5 million to widen Power Line Road, the Davenport–Haines City corridor The Ledger has called the largest developer-built road project in Polk County. The road runs through fast-developing land tied to Cassidy Holdings, a regional housing builder. The county requested the money. The state put $7.5 million into the project last year.
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Ed. note: This story was drafted with assistance from AI. Editorial judgment, sourcing, and final review were performed by Peter Schorsch and the Florida Politics editorial team.
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