* In May, the National Association for Crime Prevention, a group that obtained $160,000 in state money through Gutman, and the Adults Mankind Organization offered to provide tenant services at a building Gutman owned in Miami Beach. The services helped Gutman campaign aide Henry Berger, who had an option to buy the building, to petition for $51,600 in housing tax credits.

* Rep. Luis Rojas, R-Hialeah, engineered a $100,000 grant to the Hialeah Latin Chamber of Commerce in 1989 for a "productivity improvement center." The chamber then hired Rojas' former legislative aide, Carlos Manrique, who went into business with a company owner he met through the grant. Rojas said the grant brought new business to Hialeah. Manrique said he had the qualifications to do the job.

* In a sampling of Dade County nonprofit groups funded by the state in 1989, about a third of them used tax money to pay lobbyists who helped them obtain the money, even though the state prohibits doing so. The Herald's sampling found $100,000 in tax money spent on lobbyists, but the dollar total could be much higher.

These are not isolated examples.

Rep. Fred Lippman, D-Hollywood, helped the Southeastern College of Osteopathic Medicine, where he is a vice president, get funding for a $105,000 program to train interns in rural areas. He said he first helped the college get the grant before he worked there.

Rep. Sam Mitchell, D-Vernon, sponsored a $200,000 appropriation in 1987 for a project to encourage farmers to raise catfish. He ended up with a contract to clean and sell the fish. "They begged me to do it, " Mitchell said. "I don't see any conflict at all in this."

Former Sen. John Vogt of Cocoa Beach voted in 1985 for an experimental cleanup of Lake Apopka using water hyacinths. Amasek, his engineering firm, later got more than $2 million in state contracts as part of the cleanup. Vogt filed a disclosure that noted his firm was one of the few in the state able to do the work. It was the only company that later bid.

Political connections and lobbyists are key factors in determining who gets state money. The grants are administered through various state agencies, which often did not request them. A project's worth matters little. An agency's priorities matter even less.

Former state Secretary of Commerce Jeb Bush said the Legislature "held hostage" his budget without ever giving it a full hearing. "There was no thoughtful discussion of the effectiveness of programs. There was a tremendous amount of lobbying for these legislative initiatives."

Legislators allocated $415,000 to one Miami project -- a building for Cuban Municipal Officials in Exile -- through grants to Community Affairs, Commerce and Health and Rehabilitative Services. None of the agencies requested the money.

"A lot of these are outright gifts, " said Dunbar, who was a state legislator for 10 years before becoming the governor's legal adviser. "We need an oversight system that doesn't exist at the moment."

Most agencies refer to the grants as "pass-throughs."

"The whole process is absurd, " said Woodworth, the budget director under Gov. Bob Martinez. "It's whatever you get in. Everything becomes a state need."

The special projects are inserted into the budget by legislators, usually by members of the House and Senate committees on appropriations. There is no written record kept of who sponsored what. Often, a member asks someone else to get a project into the budget as a favor.

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