Florida Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Blaise Ingoglia, alongside Gov. Ron DeSantis, highlighted a laundry list of wasteful local government spending habits during a news conference in Jacksonville this week. The probe comes as the state looks to inject a Constitutional Amendment on Property Tax relief for Floridians on the November 2026 ballot.
Ingoglia, appointed as CFO by Gov. Ron DeSantis in July, has been probing dozens of local counties and municipalities under the Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight (FAFO) since assuming the role.
The agency is very similar to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on the federal level. This week, Ingoglia set his FAFO audit findings on Jacksonville and Mayor Donna Deegan.
"The City of Jacksonville, 199 million dollars worth of wasteful and excessive spending. I'm sorry. Donna Deegan, you're saying that you can't cut; you need every dollar; the taxpayers disagree with you," Ingoglia emphasized.
To highlight his point, Ingolia referred to a hologram to the side of him of Mayor Deegan greeting visitors to Jacksonville International Airport, which he says cost taxpayers $75,000.
"This is $75,000 of waste, fraud, and abuse. This is $75,000 that could have gone out to law enforcement raises, could have helped repair roads," Ingoglia exclaimed. "There's a lot of money that this money could have been used for."
Injecting a little humor on the matter, Ingoglia, described by many as Florida's "conservative pitbull," did his best poet version of Edgar Allan Poe to make fun of Deegan's excessive spending habits.
"Roses are red, violets are blue. Our property taxes are high because of you," Ingoglia joked.
And a longer poem, he self-titled "The Mayor's Purse."
"Donna waves the ribbon, the budget takes flight. Millions are scattered, gone overnight, a city still waiting for roads to be mended. But checks keep on flowing quite never ended. The people keep asking, Where does it go? The coppers run empty, yet taxes still grow. In the halls of the city. One lesson is clear: wasteful spending echoes year after year," Ingoglia recited.
Ingoglia further blasted other cities and counties for their reckless spending, including Orlando, accusing the city of paying $70,000 for hot yoga classes for employees for free during the day.
He also slammed the city for spending nearly half a million dollars to count trees.
"Maybe they're trying to find the money tree," Ingoglia opined. "Oh, wait, never mind, they actually found it: you, the taxpayers."
In addition, Ingoglia slammed the City of Pensacola for paying $600,000 for a "Welcome to Pensacola" sign. The CFO joked that the sign should instead read "Welcome to Wasteful Spending."
He also blasted the City of Gainesville for paying $189,000 for a direct director of equity and inclusion.
Through his findings, Ingoglia calculated over $1 billion in excessive spending by counties, including Jacksonville's Duval and Orange County's Orlando, in his probe. He also indicated the total figure could be in the tens of billions of dollars across the entire state.
"These egregious examples of wasteful spending are exactly why property taxes are rising," Ingoglia warned. "Your local governments are taking your tax dollars, your property tax revenue, because of increased property values, are expanding government in some places, doubling them, taking your money, wasting it. The taxpayers have had enough, and so have we."
