Jacob Ogles
A fiscal watchdog is raising questions over $5 million in state funding dedicated to a Holocaust museum planned in downtown Orlando.
Florida TaxWatch included funding for the Holocaust Museum for Hope & Humanity in its annual “budget turkey” list. That’s a list the organization puts out each year as Gov. Ron DeSantis considers what to veto in the budget produced by Florida lawmakers.
The turkey report flagged the Orlando museum on a list of cultural facilities that shouldn’t receive the money budgeted by state lawmakers. It notably was one of five Holocaust education-related items deemed a turkey by the organization’s analysts.
But the report makes clear that it’s the process — rather than the merit of the projects — that concerns fiscal hawks. The Department of State has a competitive cultural grant process, and the Legislature provided $32 million for that fund. But lawmakers also separately budgeted nearly $29 million for specific cultural institutions, including the Orlando museum.
“Most of these projects will receive much more than any of the ones that went through the process,” a report states. “Several of these projects have been vetoed in prior years.”
The $5 million budgeted for the Holocaust museum actually represents a fraction of what some Central Florida lawmakers wanted. Sen. Linda Stewart, an Orlando Democrat, requested $25 million for the project, according to the Orlando Sentinel. Rep. David Smith, a Winter Springs Republican who carried the measure, in the House requested the $5 million ultimately included in the budget.
The project hopes to break ground later this year.
Museum officials plan to showcase the stories of survivors of Nazi concentration camps, many using interactive displays and incorporating AI technology.
“What we are planning to build in downtown Orlando is a living narrative of the voices of people who lived through the Holocaust,” the website for the museum reads. “It will serve to honor those we lost, to reflect on the power of stories as a legacy that we will always carry, and as a reminder of why we must stand up to antisemitism and prejudice today.”
Besides the Orlando museum, TaxWatch also marked several other line items connected to the Holocaust as turkeys.
The turkey list also includes a $750,000 grant to The Florida Holocaust Museum, which already operates in St. Petersburg, for preserving Holocaust survivor testimonies and artifacts” and $375,000 for the Holocaust Documentation & Education Center in Dania Beach for front door security enhancement.
The group also spotlighted $1 million budgeted as part of the Legislature’s “sprinkle list” for the Jewish Federation Sarasota Manatee’s Holocaust Education Center, and $286,250 for the Greater Miami Jewish Federation’s The Last Ones effort “documenting the legacy of the last Holocaust survivors.”
10 comments
Dont Say FLA
May 15, 2024 at 10:19 am
OMGs the turkeys are anti-semitical (of course, bc what else could it possibly beeeeeeeee?)
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Joe
May 15, 2024 at 10:31 am
Florida Taxwatch is a conservative anti-government advocacy group, not the non-partisan nonprofit they claim to be… obviously.
Dont Say FLA
May 15, 2024 at 10:47 am
What’s obvious to me is that just on its face your accusation self-contradicts.
Florida state government is super majority conservative, so why would a “conservative anti-government advocacy group” complain about the budgetary actions of a like minded super majority government?
Are you trying to say Florida Taxwatch are anarchists? That’s the only way your accusation makes sense. Is Florida Taxwatch really Antifa?
Proud Zionist
May 15, 2024 at 10:42 am
Sadly, the Holocaust Museum for “hope and humanity” has lost its way. For example, during the George Floyd riots, the Orlando Holocaust Museum spent resources on a Marxist BLM photo exhibit, making victims of the rioters and their political ideologies.
Another example is the silence coming out of the Orlando Holocaust Center as antisemitic protests spread across college campuses, including UCF and Rollins. Jews are being targeted in similar ways that Jews were isolated and targeted in 1938 Germany leading up to the Holocaust.
The Administrators in Orlando condemn Netanyahu and his efforts to eradicate the Jihadis who breached Israel’s border in 23 places and then hunted down and murdered 1400 Jews on October 7.
Holocaust education is vitally important because Never Again is happening again as we speak.
So it goes….
Dont Say FLA
May 15, 2024 at 10:55 am
Your opinion is that Netanyahu isn’t the anti-Semite, it’s everyone else?
I suppose the “MAGA” crowd has nothing in common with the “Death to America” crowd, too. Right?
Despite these kissing cousins both proudly and incessantly proclaiming their distaste for the United States of America and even taking hostile actions against the United States of America, they’re totally different. Right?
Netenyahu brought death to Isreal so he could leverage the excuse to bring death to Gaza. IMO that is what’s ant-semitic, allowing 1200+ people to settle illegally in the danger zone and then also allowing them to be slaughtered.
Every accusation from a conservative is a confession, and Netenyahu is the anti-Semite.
rick whitaker
May 15, 2024 at 1:24 pm
PROUD ZIONIST, is your posting name the same thing as saying proud racist? i wouldn’t know, i’m an unclean gentile, so what do i know. i know a racist belief when i hear it. i am a hienz 57, so for me to be a racist, i wouldn’t know which of my races to be proud of and to be ashamed of. zionist = racist
rick whitaker
May 15, 2024 at 1:53 pm
PROUD ZIONIST , are you trying to remember the holocaust by causing a Palestinian holocaust? VERY STRANGE.
Ryan A. Feinberg
May 26, 2024 at 4:59 pm
None of that is true. Stop lying.
rick whitaker
May 26, 2024 at 8:40 pm
RYAN , he’s a zionist, they lie.
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