'Egregious' waste in government: Three things to know about Florida DOGE's latest efforts

Florida DOGE is aiming to find what it deems as wasteful, unnecessary spending by counties and cities across the state. And new details are surfacing about the scrutiny ahead.

Earlier this summer, municipalities received requests from the state Department of Government Efficiency to provide information on all revenue and expenses. In recent weeks, DOGE officials began conducting follow-up inquiries that have included visits to local government offices.

Gov. Ron DeSantis and his ally, Blaise Ingoglia, who last month was appointed by the governor as the state’s chief financial officer, have been the public faces of the initiative, painting a picture of the need to review local governments’ spending and expose any problems.

Here are some new takeaways, based on Ingoglia’s remarks in recent days.

What DOGE is looking for

In recent weeks, Florida DOGE has been obtaining spending information from many county and city governments, from Hillsborough and Pinellas counties to Jacksonville to Orange County and the city of Orlando to Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Ingoglia has explained how DOGE officials, in part, have gone about identifying the information they want: Receiving tips about what they should be examining at certain government offices. Ingoglia said an anonymous tip line could soon be created.

DOGE wants “citizens to alert us. But as of right now, it is a lot of messages and tagging us on social media of things that they have seen or articles that have been written by local press, and those are giving us the areas to look for,” he said. “We make sure that what they’re saying is accurate, so we do our due diligence.”

Speaking in Orlando last week, Ingoglia said DOGE does not pick locations “willy-nilly.”

“People inside government, some elected officials contact us and they tell us, ‘Hey, you should be looking at this department, what they did over here when they signed this contract,’ and when we see that smoke, there’s usually fire,” he said.

Local governments have complied with the requests, often providing mountains of information within tens of thousands of files. Broward County leaders recently gave nearly 55,000 files to DOGE after its visit to their offices, the county said. Earlier this week, Orlando had readied 27,000 files for DOGE to review.

Broward County was one of the first local governments selected. A team visited Broward offices on July 31 and Aug. 1 to review the process of assigning contracts to vendors and the county’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. County officials also provided information about compensation, water and wastewater management, property management and homeless services.

In anticipation of DOGE visits to Palm Beach County offices next week, county officials must respond to specific DOGE requests before or during the team’s arrival. This includes providing information on environmental goals — dubbed “Green New Deal” by DOGE — transportation, homeless services, property and leases, employee compensation and nearly 20 different requests under the umbrella of diversity, equity and inclusion.

Similarly in Orange County, DOGE auditors looked at personnel costs, contracts, salaries, and information used for any diversity, equity and inclusion training and details of electric vehicle purchases. And in the city of Orlando, DOGE had mentioned in a letter to Mayor Buddy Dyer about 50 different data points under review, including salary data, contracts of at least $10,000, and spending and programming in the city’s Equity, Multicultural Affairs and Hispanic Office for Local Assistance.

DOGE says it’s finding ‘egregious’ examples of spending

Municipal budgets are partially funded by property taxes, which Ingoglia said have “skyrocketed” in the past five years.

“Local governments took that money, started expanding government,” Ingoglia said. “Their general fund budgets, the ones that have been funded in part by property taxes, have increased anywhere in the state between 60% to 120%. So we think that government is bloated.”

Since starting the audits, Ingoglia said the DOGE teams are finding “pretty egregious examples of waste, fraud and abuse.”

While he didn’t provide specific examples of such waste, fraud and abuse, Ingoglia said generally, local government officials feel as though they cannot cut any parts of their budgets. “This is a reflex from the local government because they want to keep the amount of income stream that they have right now,” he said.

Ingoglia was clear about an expense DOGE does not deem wasteful: essential services.

“The first role of government is to protect its citizens. So if you are protecting your citizens, the very first lines that you fill on your budget are fire and police,” he said. “Personally I don’t want to hear from any local government saying that they’re going to cut any fire and any police because those are the first things that they should be taking care of.”

In November 2026, Ingoglia said a constitutional amendment could be on the ballot regarding property tax relief, though the exact language is still unknown. “The governor and I are pushing very hard for the elimination of property taxes for homesteaded properties,” he said.

DOGE expects to have reports in 60 days

After the initial audits, Ingoglia said DOGE will issue reports.

Though he said the reports will take about 60 days, Ingoglia clarified “no hard-and-fast deadline” exists. Whether DOGE’s reports will be available as early as October is not yet clear.

“We want to make sure that we are as thorough as possible. We have a lot of work to do with the counties. We have a lot of work to do with the cities,” he said. “What I can tell you is that I’m not going away.”

If anything is missed during the “first go-around” of reviews, Ingoglia said as many as three inspections will be conducted.

“Cities and counties should not make the mistake to think this is a short-term thing. This is a long-term thing, and that should be a chilling message to governments that somebody is finally watching and looking out for the taxpayers here in the state of Florida,” he said.

DOGE teams ultimately will be delivering “substantial examples of where local governments can cut,” he said.

Ingoglia emphasized the importance of compliance from Florida’s municipalities, threatening that if any county or city employees were to alter anything, DOGE would detect it.

“We have heard of instances where they are doing that. They are changing keywords on contracts from diversity, equity, or inclusion to something else so this way when you do a search, it makes it harder to find it,” he said. “Let me just tell everyone we are going to find it.”

Ingoglia did not specify exactly where such instances occurred. “If there’s any local government employees out there, do not listen to your bosses. … We are not going to tolerate any changes.”

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