During a recent stop in South Florida, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis name-dropped Broward County while talking about the importance of “DOGE-ing” local governments — or scrutinizing their expenses to “reduce the bloat.”
“You know, I saw the thing, I think it was Broward over the last five years, their budget is up 82%,” the governor said in Miami. “But the population hasn’t actually gone up. So how does that work and what’s going on there?”
DeSantis’ Broward-oriented question came toward the end of a news conference at Florida International University on Feb. 28 that touched on a range of state issues. There he also spoke about his plan, announced days earlier, to have a Florida version of Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” which would aim to root out waste in the state and “eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy.” A tech-savvy “DOGE team” would use artificial intelligence to help reveal some “eye-opening” findings.
“We really do need to DOGE local governments,” DeSantis said at FIU. “Because if you look at what’s happened in Florida, our property values have exploded, and what does that mean? It means you pay more property taxes.”
Moments later he asked, how are “the budgets done?” and brought up his question about a Broward budget that he was concerned had risen significantly. Then he said, “We want to be able to have a DOGE unit.”
In his remarks, DeSantis didn’t specify whether he was referring to Broward County government’s budget, or some other Broward agency’s budget, or perhaps a budget that pertained to a specific initiative in Broward.
Broward officials aren’t sure why the governor brought up the county.
Broward has kept the tax rate steady since 2017 “and our AAA bond rating proves our county’s credit worthiness,” said Broward County spokesman Gregory Meyer. “Broward County shares Governor DeSantis’ desire to ensure that local governments in the State of Florida are operating efficiently with taxpayer dollars,” he said.
He said “while it is not clear how the 82% figure was derived,” in the last five years general government services have increased by 39%, or less than 8% each year.
“These critical services that government must fund include the provision of public safety, constitutional officers, and other traditional government services (such as public works), while ensuring that adequate reserves are in place,” Meyer said.
If the governor’s comments were regarding a penny sales tax, Broward has a response for that, too.
In November 2018, Broward voters approved a one-cent transportation sales tax that went into effect Jan. 1, 2019. After the election, the budget was “revised to capture and include these new dollars,” Meyer said.
The adopted budget rose from $4.824 million to “capture and include these new dollars,” which were $5.227 million.
“When comparing the revised FY19 Budget to the revised FY24 Budget,” “apples to apples” it results in a 66.4% increase over five years, Meyer said.
He said comparing the fiscal year 2019 budget to fiscal year 2025 “actually represents a more modest 48.8% growth over six years,” he said.
The county has already been audited by the state, both for revenues since 2006 and expenditures since 2005. The last audits for both came in 2023.
A spokesperson for the governor’s office did not respond to a request for clarification if the comments were intended for Broward County government proper, or any branch within it.
Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@sunsentinel.com. Follow on X, formerly Twitter, @LisaHuriash
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