Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s new chief financial officer, Blaise Ingoglia, unveiled details Tuesday about their plans to DOGE local governments, hoping to uncover what they see as wasteful or inappropriate spending.
Their first target: Broward County.
It is far from the last. After announcing their efforts at a news conference in northwest Fort Lauderdale, they flew to Gainesville for a similar announcement about the city. And over the next couple of weeks, DeSantis said the list would grow to 10 to 15 city and county governments.
“We are pleased to really hit the ground running,” DeSantis said. “It’s off to the races. I think there’s problems in local governments. Some local governments have done a good job. I think we have a big, diverse state, and it’s not necessarily like this part of the state is all bad, this part of the state’s all good. It’s really a mix, and I’ve had a lot of complaints, from folks down here in South Florida, vis-a-vis some of the governments.”
DeSantis said it is “very possible” that Miami-Dade County and “possible” Palm Beach County will soon be added to the list. Other local governments — cities, towns and villages — won’t be immune, he said.
“We’ll be starting with those jurisdictions (about) which (we) have received a lot of complaints for their spending practices, and so we’re here in Broward County and I think most people know there’s some criticism of how the county government has operated,” DeSantis said.
State teams will arrive at Broward County offices and elsewhere starting July 31 for “onsite DOGE inspections and audits, ” DeSantis said, bolstered with additional authority the Legislature authorized for the executive branch during this year’s legislative session.
They’ll be looking for areas that DeSantis and the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature has sought to eliminate, such as efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion, and some kinds of environmental efforts aimed at responding to climate change.
“Broward has also spent a lot of money on kind of pet causes whether it’s D, E and I, whether it’s the Green New Deal,” DeSantis said. “There’s a lot of things that really deserve scrutiny.”
DeSantis cited County Administrator Monica Cepero, who he said “makes almost half a million dollars a year.” He brought up her salary again in Gainesville.
DeSantis and Ingoglia also pointed to Visit Lauderdale, the county tourism promotion agency, spending $800,000 on a float in the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 1, 2024.
DeSantis and Ingoglia said their efforts are aimed mainly at protecting property taxpayers. The Rose parade float was paid for with taxes travelers pay when they rent hotel rooms, with use of the money limited to promoting Broward as a tourist destination. Ingoglia conceded that fact, but said it was indicative of a broader problem.
“That is just a symptom of excessive reckless spending where quite frankly they don’t care. I’m sorry to say this, but a lot of local officials just don’t care because they don’t view it as their own money,” he said, suggesting that local elected officials view tax receipts “like this endless pot of money.”
DeSantis and Ingoglia depicted state government, where they’ve been operating, as a lean and efficient operation. Ingoglia was a state senator until DeSantis appointed him to fill the vacant state CFO job; he took office on Monday.
Broward, they said, has experienced an explosion of property tax money coming into its coffers in recent years. They said that has fueled spending far above what would be needed to keep pace with relatively modest population growth in recent years.
DeSantis said the amount of property taxes taken in by the county has increased by almost 50% — some $450 million — since 2020 while population has increased less than 5%.
Ingoglia said local government spending “is far outstripping in my opinion, the residents and the taxpayers’ willingness and ability to pay.”
“There is a new era of accountability in the state of Florida when it comes to fiscal spending,” said Ingoglia, a former chair of the Republican Party of Florida. “I will tell you that I cut my teeth years ago calling out local wasteful spending. And I have seen that local governments usually have the most egregious patterns of spending money on stuff that, quite frankly if the voters knew and we shone a light on it, they would probably disagree with.
“Broward County unfortunately is probably, in my mind, one of the worst offenders when it comes to spending,” he said.
Broward Mayor Beam Furr has in the past defended the county’s spending priorities and values.
Speaking to the Broward Workshop group of CEOs and other business leaders in March, Furr was critical of the kind of slash-and-burn methods employed by the federal DOGE under billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump. He said Broward County was “taking, by and large, an entirely different approach.”
“There’s nothing wrong with trying to eliminate waste and trying to be as productive and efficient as possible. But how you go achieving that makes all the difference,” Furr said in March. He defended government employees who “make our lives infinitely better every day” through a myriad of functions.
And he singled out two department heads to make broader points: the library system director and the county’s chief resilience officer, who he said is recognized “as one of the foremost experts on climate change” whose work has helped figure out the best ways to “address the effects of climate change and ensure that our homes, our businesses, and our families can still be here for generations to come. This is work that is unparalleled anywhere in this country.”
Furr wasn’t immediately available for comment Tuesday. Visit Lauderdale CEO Stacy Ritter didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Ingoglia, referring to his time in the Legislature, said county and local governments spend lots of money on things that would not survive public scrutiny if they were exposed — and then come to the state seeking money for local projects.
“The question we need to ask is (are) the counties who are requesting the money actually spending the money that they have wisely?” Ingoglia said. “What will frustrate me is when I see a county egregiously spending, not being good stewards of the taxpayer dollars, and then all of a sudden you hear an appropriation request.”
Ingoglia was sharply critical of the way local governments spin property taxes. Many tell their residents that the tax rate, or millage, is staying the same. But with rising property values, that still means more tax money coming into government coffers because a tax bill is determined by multiplying the rate by the property value.
“If you want the same revenue, the millage rate should be going down, not staying the same,” Ingoglia said. “So when your county comes out and says, well, you know, our millage rate has started the same, that’s a tax increase in this scenario.”
DeSantis suggested the Broward Sheriff’s Office could also be subject to scrutiny as part of the DOGE review. “There’s a couple of sheriff’s departments across the state that people have concerns about.”
Specifically asked about the Broward Sheriff’s Office, DeSantis said, “I think that’s all fair game.”
“We have the best sheriffs in the country in the state of Florida but I would not say all 67 departments are run (well). I would say most of them are run well, but I would say that there are some that they need to be looked at and I think this (Broward) could be one here, and I also think there’s a couple others that have been brought to mind about where you would look to do. So stay tuned on all that.” In Gainesville, he cited the Broward Sheriff’s Office as “grist for the mill.”
Sheriff Dr. Gregory Tony is independently elected. But his budget is financed by county tax money overseen by the County Commission, which oversees almost all the rest of county government, including agencies such as Port Everglades and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
Tony has been elected sheriff twice, but he originally was appointed to the job in 2019 — by DeSantis — when the governor removed the previous sheriff, Scott Israel.
Spokespersons for the Sheriff’s Office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
DeSantis said Broward County government has been somewhat cooperative with initial state efforts. It responded to some state questions with a letter Monday afternoon, he said, but that didn’t affect his decision to pick the county first. “We had already decided that this was gonna be something, you know, that we were gonna do going forward.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, the county hadn’t responded to questions about Cepero’s salary and benefits. The website openpayrolls.com estimated it is $461,232, in the vicinity of DeSantis’ figure, but it wasn’t clear if that includes extras.
Earlier in Cepero’s career she was an adviser to former Gov. Jeb Bush, a Republican. She’s currently registered with no party affiliation.
Several of Broward’s leading Republicans were present for the event, including state Rep. Chip LaMarca, a former member of the County Commission; Broward College President Torey Alston, a former DeSantis appointee to the School Board and County Commission; Michele Merrell, the county’s elected state Republican committeewoman; and Barbra Stern, who finished a close second in the election for Fort Lauderdale mayor last year and has filed paperwork as a candidate for 2028.
This article will be updated. Please check back for more information.
Political writer Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.