The Golden Turkey Award: Silly and Wasteful Spending in State Government

THE GOLDEN TURKEY AWARDS

Minnesota’s government wastes a LOT of money on silly things. Each year, we give out the Golden Turkey Award to the worst example.

Tim Walz was elected to Congress in 2006 and served there for 12 years before becoming governor. So when he was asked to return to Washington to testify before a congressional committee on June 12, 2025, many (including the Golden Turkey Committee) were surprised to learn he had run up a $430,000 bill with lawyers and lobbyists to prepare him for this one-time appearance. Spending $430,000 to prepare for one hearing in an environment where Walz spent 12 years of his career was a complete waste of money, making this Golden Turkey nomination a no-brainer. The Walz legal bill ran away with the election this year, receiving 53 percent of the vote.

It all started when Rep. James Comer asked three governors, Walz, Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Gov. Kathleen Hochul of New York, to appear before his committee in June to explain their sanctuary state policies. Most of the questions for Walz centered on his statement comparing ICE agents to a “modern-day Gestapo.” Several times in the hearing, he was asked to apologize for his choice of words or walk back the statement. Each time he refused and doubled down.

It’s hard to understand how hiring out-of-state lawyers at $800 per hour was necessary to prepare Walz to defend his own statements and policies. An examination of the legal bills shows that much of the money went toward lawyers becoming familiar with Minnesota immigration policy and coordinating the message with the other two governors invited to testify that day.   

As governor, Walz has access to hundreds of state employees who could have briefed him for his appearance on Capitol Hill. In fact, they probably joined the high-paid lawyers in the briefings, making this even more wasteful. Walz also took advantage of his access to Attorney General Keith Ellison and his staff to prepare for the hearing. The advice of Ellison, himself a former member of Congress, should have been enough.

Rep. Harry Niska criticized the expenditure in an interview with KSTP-TV: “Gov. Walz spent 12 years in Congress,” Niska said. “The attorney general [Keith Ellison] of our state spent 12 years in Congress. They know what hearings look like, sound like. They don’t need to hire Washington, D.C., lawyers at over $700 per hour to research that for them.”

Walz defended the expenditures, saying his own staff “didn’t have the expertise for this for what they were asking.” Walz administration staffers don’t have the expertise to testify about Walz administration policy? That sounds just preposterous enough to be nominated and win the 2025 Golden Turkey Award.

— Hall of Fame: Past Golden Turkey Winners —

2024 WINNER: Millions Wasted on the New State Flag and Seal

Minnesota’s new state flag received by far the most nominations from our online process in 2024, second only to the always-popular nomination of Tim Walz (who sadly can’t win, since the Golden Turkey Award goes to a project, not a person). It wasn’t enough for our 2023 legislature to spend the entire surplus, raise taxes, and add thousands of new government bureaucrats — they also had to change the state flag and seal. Democrats in the House and Senate put together a rushed process that lacked any real input from the citizens resulting in a bland (yet controversial) new flag design and a state seal that violates the very law used to create it in the first place. Worst of all, the legislature added language forcing every city, county, and school board to immediately replace all flags and seals using the old design, instead of allowing them to replace them over time as current supplies are exhausted. For this reason, the new flag and seal design earned a 2024 Golden Turkey Award nomination. Click here to read more about the flag and seal.

2023 WINNER: $700 Million New State Office Building

The Minnesota Legislature is about to build another new office building for themselves and once again, they’re doing it without ever taking a vote on the floor of the House or Senate. Most employees at the MN House of Representatives still haven’t fully returned to the office since COVID, but that’s not stopping them from building a “Taj Mahal of office buildings” costing double what they spent on the entire Capitol building renovations. Click here to read more about this boondoggle!

2022 WINNER: The Minnesota Department of Education: $250 Million to Free Food Fraud

Poor management and oversight by the Minnesota Department of Education of a pandemic-related food program won them the fourth annual Golden Turkey Award.

Read more about the free food fraud scandal

ALSO IN 2022: Southwest Light Rail boondoggle wins inaugural Golden Turkey Lifetime Achievement Award

At $500 million over budget and almost 10 years behind schedule, this is one of the biggest boondoggles we’ve ever seen and it’s going straight to the hall of fame!

Click here to read more about the light rail boondoggle.

FALL 2021 WINNER: $6 Million Empty Newport Transit Station: The Bus Stop Where No Buses Stop!

The Newport Transit Station opened in 2014 and cost taxpayers $6.45 million. A July 2017 article titled “The east metro’s most expensive park-and-ride station is also the least used” referred to the station as the “Hilton Hotel of bus stops.” At that time, the Met Council boasted ridership of eight passengers a day on the bus line serving the Newport Transit Station. In the post-COVID world, there are no buses serving this sprawling transit stop, which leaves the Newport Transit Station with an empty 150-car parking lot and a Golden Turkey Award.

SPRING 2021 WINNER: $7.2 Million Goose Creek Rest Stop

Curved glass, Brazilian Ipe wood, a modern play area and “bathrooms fit for a fancy hotel,” according to WCCO-TV. The latest museum in Minneapolis? A million-dollar home on Lake Minnetonka? No, these architectural features belong to a rest area on Highway 35 between St. Paul and Duluth.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation used $7.2 million of trunk highway funding (money that could have gone to roads and bridges) to refurbish the Goose Creek Rest Stop. No one can answer why they used taxpayer money for such a fancy design, and transportation officials are vowing never to let it happen again. We took a tour. Click here to watch the video.

In the meantime, truck drivers and tourists will be “going in style” at this one-of-a-kind rest area. Since the Goose Creek Rest Stop won the Golden Turkey Award, we will petition to have a commemorative plaque installed in the lobby.

2020 WINNER: $6.9 Million Thankfully-Still-Empty Tim Walz Morgue

Just as fear was subsiding over Gov. Tim Walz’s wild prediction of 50,000 Minnesota COVID deaths, he scared everyone all over again by buying a morgue for $6.9 million to house up to 5,100 bodies that he claimed would soon be piling up due to the pandemic.

The $6.9 million bought plenty of fear, with Walz officials evoking images of “shallow graves,” “full and overflowing” funeral homes and bodies “stacked in U-Hauls.”

Six months after purchasing the building the state is using it to store PPE instead of bodies, and that’s why it’s earned a Golden Turkey Award for wasteful spending.