The state’s chief financial officer has kicked off visits to warn local governments to cut back on spending — and give residents some property tax relief.

The first two stops by Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia came recently: He held news conferences in Orange County this past Monday and the city of Jacksonville on Wednesday. With each visit, Ingoglia held up a placard with a massive dollar figure in red, of nearly $200 million, arguing that’s how much residents were overtaxed in Orange and Jacksonville. The mayors of each community soon after challenged Ingoglia’s remarks, defending their spending.

These two local governments are among the many in Florida that face scrutiny from the state’s Department of Governmental Efficiency, or DOGE. And in the coming weeks, communities in South Florida and other parts of the state also may expect to hear from Ingoglia. Some frustrated local elected officials say they hoped the CFO would establish a more collaborative relationship, rather than the current approach.

The culture in Tallahassee once was “a partnership between the counties, the cities and state government. I don’t get a sense that that is the situation today,” said Palm Beach County Commissioner Maria Sachs, who worked as a state representative and then senator from 2006 to 2016.

“It’s almost become a ‘gotcha,’ and I really am frustrated by it because we all serve the same people, and people pay city taxes, county taxes, and they pay the state,” she said. “So we need to be in a partnership and not in an adversarial position.”

‘You are all being overtaxed’

In Jacksonville, Ingoglia told the audience to “hold onto their hats” before brandishing a placard emblazoned with the figure of nearly $200 million.

“The big-government apologists can go out there and try to sizzle their way around this, and they can try to deflect all they want,” Ingoglia told reporters and local leaders in Jacksonville on Wednesday. “But the reality is this number is the amount that you are all being overtaxed here in the city of Jacksonville.”

Ahead of the release of reports that would illustrate “specific instances of waste spending,” Ingoglia has been providing dollar amounts for what DOGE believes is being overspent in some municipalities.

When Ingoglia spoke in Orange County, he contended local officials were overspending by a little more than $190 million. This number, and the nearly $200 million in Jacksonville, were determined by analyzing each local government’s budget from 2019-2020 to 2024-2025, he said.

“What we did is we went back to (2019-2020) and we moved forward and indexed that number every year for inflation and population growth,” Ingoglia said in Jacksonville.

Once the number had been indexed for each year, Ingoglia said DOGE teams put in “not one but two additional spending buffers because we know government doesn’t run efficiently.”

Other stats Ingoglia displayed on placards in Jacksonville and Orange County included the number of employee hires in recent years, population growth for each municipality and salary increases.

“Local elected officials are already playing defense and trying to justify their wasteful, bloated budgets in saying that the increases are largely attributable to inflation and rising population, not to government. I say BS. Our calculations beg to differ,” he said in Orange County.

Ingoglia went on to slam Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, saying that if Demings were to run for governor, he should be disqualified due to the county’s spending. “Mayor Demings doesn’t know how to read his own damn budget,” Ingoglia said.

Demings defended the county’s spending, saying Ingoglia “ought to get his own house in order first before he goes looking in someone else’s house,” the Orlando Sentinel reported.

Ingoglia also took a jab at Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan, saying her spending “is on steroids.”

Deegan replied to Ingoglia’s remarks, noting how he didn’t provide enough specifics, Florida Politics reported. “There were no suggestions. Nothing that bears any resemblance to anything that we’re actually doing in this city, nor an acknowledgment that we’re in a consolidated government,” Deegan said. “At the end of the day, I’ve just got to say I was looking for the beef today and I did not find any.”

Once DOGE releases reports with its findings, Ingoglia said the information provided will further illustrate why government, at all levels, needs to be reined in. He estimated reports could be released later this month or next month.

An appeal to voters

Much of the DOGE efforts could ultimately culminate with a referendum question on the November 2026 ballot likely regarding property taxes.

The average U.S. citizen is a “casual observer of politics,” said David Macdonald, an American politics professor at the University of Florida. Most people’s interest and knowledge about what’s happening in the political realm is on the national level — rarely does it trickle down to the local level.

So it remains to be seen whether Ingoglia and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ tactic of denouncing elected municipal officials’ spending, and appealing solely to property taxpayers to get votes for a referendum, will work.

Whether a ballot question drafted by DeSantis’ administration regarding property taxes is successful could depend on a few things, Macdonald said:

— How the issue is presented.

— Whether people like, dislike or don’t particularly care about the current state leaders.

— If it is possible to overcome Florida’s 60% majority requirement for constitutional amendments.

On one hand, “talking about government spending just in very broad terms about how it’s wasteful can be effective,” Macdonald said. “On the other hand, it can also be effective to frame that as, these are things that provide fire and police services and education, and it’s how we improve our roads and build parks.

“When you start talking about the specifics, these things become a lot more popular than when you start talking about it in the abstract.”

If, for example, people were asked if the state should ensure local governments are not wasting money, that is an entirely different question than if you ask people if the state should require every local government to cut a portion of its services, Macdonald said.

Macdonald said he thinks DOGE’s actions likely are a mixture of symbolic actions and actually trying to reduce tax dollars. “It plays in the media outlets they want it to play in and appeals to their base,” he said.

‘We have local government for a reason’

Plans for news conferences in other municipalities have yet to be announced. But rather than show up unannounced to Palm Beach County and describe how much DOGE concluded the county is overspending, Sachs said she hopes Ingoglia treats his review of the county’s finances as a professional partnership.

“I would look forward to working with him and his budget analyst to make our government even more efficient, so that’s my message to the CFO, and hopefully he’ll hear me as someone who was serving in the state government,” Sachs said.

Sachs isn’t convinced DOGE’s motivation is to create a more affordable Florida, as state leaders have said.

“I think it’s in a way to get more control for state government,” she said. “Control needs to be with the government that’s closest to the people, and that is city government, municipal governments, county government, not state or federal.”

Sachs said regardless of political party, people want the opportunity to talk in person with a municipal official, and ask about the school their children may go to, or inquire about the need for an extra fire station.

Palm Beach County Commissioner Marci Woodward said if the county were to receive a “big number” from DOGE of perceived overspending, remedying that is quite complicated.

“It’s going to be vague and broad, and in order for us to make the changes, there’s a lot of digging and detail work that has to be done,” Woodward said.

Even if the county were given more specifics, such as a certain department spending $12 million more than they should, Woodward said, the commissioners can’t just remove that amount of money from that department and call it a day.

“There’s a process of what are we cutting. Are we cutting jobs? Are we cutting locations?” she said. “That will take a lot of time, it’s going to take a lot of staff time. It’s easy to say we’re going to reduce this, but it’s a lot harder to actually implement it, but I think we’re up for it.”

Woodward said if Ingoglia were to give them a number of overspending like he did in Orange County and Jacksonville, she would welcome it, even though she said she is not a fan of DOGE’s approach, nor is she a fan of “blanket policies coming from far, far away.”

“We have local government for a reason because we’re very much in tune to our local communities our cities, our county and what the needs are and what our residents expect, and it’s not the same across the state, it’s not even the same across this county,” she said.

At a commission meeting on Aug. 26, Woodward said she was “very uncomfortable” knowing she and her colleagues had to vote on the budget on Sept. 9 given that Ingoglia had scrutinized the county’s spending on Aug. 19 without giving specific details.

In Jacksonville, Ingoglia said looking ahead, a goal is to make the voters aware of the issues with government spending.

“All we’re doing is taking government’s own numbers and sharing it with you guys in a way that laypeople can understand because property tax relief is on the horizon, whether local governments want to admit it or not,” he said. “I’m not lobbying. I’ve never lobbied them for what they should do. All I’m doing is I’m presenting the voters with the information so they can make informed decisions.”

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