Bolstered by polished-for-TV visuals, Florida’s chief financial officer brought his traveling property tax exhibition to Pembroke Pines on Tuesday afternoon.
The intent was clear: Depict Broward County government as a hotbed of wasteful, abusive and excessive spending.
CFO Blaise Ingoglia got the desired headlines online, in print and on TV. But after the big reveal — he removed a large blue cloth to reveal a large chart on an easel purporting to show “over spending” and “over taxing” and held up a series of smaller cards with big numbers — questions abound.
It remains unclear if the spending is profligate, as Ingoglia and Gov. Ron DeSantis assert.
Or if it’s hyperbole from the Republican state officials designed to make the Democratic-controlled county government look bad. Or if it’s aimed at helping to sell voters on an audacious push from Ingoglia and DeSantis to drastically reduce or even eliminate property taxes for residential homeowners — and further the two officials’ political ambitions.
The numbers
The numbers presented by Ingoglia were big, and the CFO spoke with conviction.
He said state analysts had examined property taxes and spending by Broward County government over six budget years, starting with the 2019-2020 fiscal year and ending with the 2024-2025 fiscal year, which ended on Tuesday.
Ingoglia’s conclusion: County government spending was $617.6 million more in the most recent fiscal year than it was in fiscal 2019-2020.
He said his office indexed the spending from the first year to account for inflation and population growth and added a “5% buffer” and a “10% buffer” to come up with “the number where the budget probably should be or could be.”
When considering those factors, his formula means $427.8 million of added spending wasn’t out of line.
But, he said, Broward County was guilty of spending $189.8 million more than needed to account for population growth and inflation. It’s that amount that he said was excessive and wasteful.
The details behind those figures are unclear.
Ingoglia’s team didn’t provide backup materials to the 70 or so people, including many of the county’s leading Republicans, at the event at the Keiser University campus in Pembroke Pines or the news reporters who attended. His office website has a press release with the same numbers.
After Ingoglia’s announcement, County Administrator Monica Cepero, in an email to county commissioners, used non-confrontational, diplomatic language to dispute the state official’s conclusions and his methodology.
Ceparo — who avoided using Ingoglia’s name in her communication with commissioners — said the CFO “discussed how much he believed” the county’s budget should have grown over the years and “shared that he estimated” there was overspending.
“Thus far,” Cepero wrote, “we have been unable to verify the sources of data used to arrive at these values. For example, neither the population growth nor the inflationary index match commonly used sources, nor can we confirm the correct adopted general fund budget amounts were used in his calculations.”
Cepero said the county general fund increased by $536 million during the time, “which does not align with” Ingoglia’s $617.6 million.
After Ingoglia visited four other communities for essentially the same kind of presentation as Broward, but with a different set of numbers for each, Broward Commissioner Steve Geller, a former Florida Senate Democratic leader, said the county’s spending was not out of line.
“Factoring in both the population increase and inflation,” Geller wrote in a newsletter to constituents the day before Ingoglia’s visit, “Broward’s spending should have increased over the last five years by 32.9%, while it’s actually gone up by 33.9%. Very close.”
Why now?
The focus on local government spending and on property taxes is a joint effort from DeSantis and Ingoglia.
DeSantis is looking for a dramatic finish to his two terms as governor, which end in January 2027 when term limits kick in and as he contemplates ways to market himself to voters in other states if he again runs for the Republican presidential nomination.
Early this year he started talking about the idea of eliminating property taxes. More recently he’s touted the idea of drastically reducing or eliminating property taxes on residential homeowners. He hasn’t revealed a plan for how that would work, and how local governments would pay for essential services without property taxes, but said recently he’d soon propose details.
Ingoglia is perhaps the most outspoken proponent of the governor’s efforts.
Ingoglia, a former state senator, former state representative and former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, was one of DeSantis’ strongest allies in the Legislature.
DeSantis appointed him to fill the vacant job of CFO, and Ingoglia is running for election to the post next year.
Ingoglia was introduced Tuesday by Keiser University Vice Chancellor Belinda Keiser, a prominent Republican, as an “outstanding Florida leader” and a “strong voice for accountability and fiscal responsibility” whose focus is “protecting Floridians’ hard-earned dollars.”
Ingoglia was sworn in on July 21. The next day DeSantis and Ingoglia flew to Fort Lauderdale to unveil their plans to DOGE local governments in the state, starting with Broward, the most Democratic county in Florida.
The DOGE name was inspired by the President Donald Trump-billionaire Elon Musk effort earlier this year to cut federal programs and fire employees called the Department of Government Efficiency. DeSantis and Ingoglia have since added another name, Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight, and used its acronym, FAFO. The polite version of FAFO is “fool around, find out,” with the most common usage employing a vulgar word instead of “fool.”
Ingoglia said what he presented on Tuesday in Broward, and earlier at four other events, were “FAFO audits” with big-picture spending totals and that forthcoming DOGE audits would offer details of wasteful spending. DOGE reports are “coming out pretty soon.”
Comparisons
Ingoglia’s numbers can be viewed in multiple ways.
The Broward figures are indeed eye-popping, which isn’t surprising for the state’s second largest and heavily urbanized county that is home to almost 2 million residents. The general fund budget, which pays for most everyday operating expenses, such as the Sheriff’s Office, the jail, libraries and parks, is about $2 billion.
Even Ingoglia’s figures, which he said showed a lack of fortitude by local elected officials, make them look good by comparison.
Five days before visiting Broward, Ingoglia visited Alachua County to report on $84 million of “excessive, wasteful spending.”
Using Ingoglia’s formula, that works out to excessive wasteful spending of $283 per resident in Alachua County. In Broward, the supposedly excessive and wasteful spending is $95 a head.
As he’s done at other stops, Ingoglia in Broward held up various cards with numbers depicting the supposedly excessive spending.
He didn’t feature the per capita number, instead offering a different perspective.
Though he’d explained earlier it made sense to adjust government spending for inflation and population growth, he switched to a completely different methodology.
Lamenting the effect of what he said was overspending on individuals, he took the entire increase and divided it by each newcomer to Broward, which provided eye-popping numbers as he held up a sign with the figures: $10,861 for each new person who moved to Broward County and $43,443 for a family of four. “If you were a business operating like that you would be bankrupt,” he said.
But that suggests that every $1 of additional county spending covers only the 56,862 newcomers and not the total population, and that none of the increase is due to inflation.
Biggest dispute
Property taxes fund the general funds of cities, towns, villages and counties. And one of the biggest areas of general-fund spending is public safety, including law enforcement and fire-rescue.
And that makes public safety spending the most politically charged element of the debate over whether to slash property taxes.
At every stop on his taxation-spending-budget tour, including Pembroke Pines, Ingoglia said the top priority for the government is public safety. And he said those can be fully funded while cutting property taxes.
Ingoglia has repeatedly cautioned people not to believe what they’ll hear from their local government officials, when they say that property taxes can’t be reduced on the scale DeSantis and Ingoglia want without finding some other major source of money or cutting essential services, including public safety.
“Local governments just will not constrain themselves,” Ingoglia said. “Big-government apologists are coming out of the woodwork making excuses” for their spending. “They’re going to be saying, ‘If we cut, we’re going to have to cut fire and police.’ That is just nonsense.”
That’s not true, warn Geller and other local government officials.
Geller, in his newsletter, agreed with Ingoglia on one point: That “the most important duty of government is to protect its citizens. … However, dealing with public safety is not the only duty of county government, just the single most important one. We need to fund other services.”
No examination
Broward County’s general fund budget for the fiscal year that began Wednesday is about $2 billion. The Sheriff’s Office accounts for $833.9 million, county documents show.
Sheriff Gregory Tony was appointed to the post by DeSantis when he suspended the previous sheriff. Voters subsequently elected Tony twice.
Still, when DeSantis and Ingoglia unveiled their DOGE plans in Fort Lauderdale, the governor said the Broward Sheriff’s Office could also be subject to scrutiny. “I think that’s all fair game,” he said.
On Tuesday in Pembroke Pines, Ingoglia said “everyone’s budget should be scrutinized for maximum taxpayer efficiency. That’s just a blanket statement.”
The Broward Sheriff’s Office is not being scrutinized as part of DOGE, Ingoglia said.
“Specifically the Sheriff’s Office here? No. But what I will tell you is we have received numerous inquiries about the sheriff’s budget here and all I can say with that is that again we are here, we should be protecting people but we should also balance the taxpayer with making sure we keep people safe at the same time.”
What next
Ingoglia and DeSantis continue touring the state to criticize local governments for what they say is excessive spending.
Ingoglia has said DOGE reports detailing problems with local governments would be forthcoming “soon.”
A committee in the state House of Representatives, but not so far in the state Senate, has been examining the property tax system. And DeSantis on Wednesday said he would put forth a proposal at some point.
“We’re working on the exact proposal,” he said. “We’ve got numbers. We’ve got language. We’re doing that. So that will happen. You guys will see that in due time.”
A major change in property taxes would require changing the Florida Constitution through a voter referendum, most likely on the November 2026 election ballot. First, the Legislature would have to approve a proposal.
For most of his term, Republicans who control the House and Senate have given DeSantis whatever he demanded. But they began pushing back earlier this year. And many Republicans, who have roots in local government or want to return to local government after their legislative service, haven’t embraced upending the property tax system.
If lawmakers don’t offer what he wants, DeSantis publicly offered a threat, musing about ordering them into a special session on property taxes next summer — just as they’re in the heat of their campaigns for the August 2026 primaries.
“Imagine that. I don’t think a lot of these guys would want to vote the wrong way then. It’s interesting, when they know the voters are watching they tend to govern themselves accordingly,” the governor said.
Political writer Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.