Palm Beach County government spending has surpassed inflation and population growth by more than $344 million this year, Florida’s chief financial officer argued Thursday.
As part of what CFO Blaise Ingoglia called “the wasteful spending exposing tour,” he held a news conference in West Palm Beach to call attention to his office’s findings, holding up placards with large numbers on them.
“Palm Beach County needs to do better. The taxpayers deserve better,” Ingoglia said. “If government didn’t grow, it wouldn’t need all that money. If it didn’t need all that money, you would not have to be taxed to pay for it.”
Palm Beach County, the third most populous county in Florida, is the eleventh location that Ingoglia has visited to call out what he says is wasteful spending by municipal governments. Ingoglia said the $344 million figure is the largest “raw number” DOGE has identified as overspending in the state so far.
Ingoglia visited Broward County on Sept. 30, claiming government officials there overspent by about $190 million this year. These numbers come from analyses conducted by the state’s Department of Governmental Efficiency, following trips the DOGE team took to municipalities across the state earlier this year to audit budgets.
During his news conference, a sign at the lectern read, “FAFO audit,” a reference to the Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight, another term being used as part of the initiative.
DOGE ran calculations that looked at fiscal years 2019-2020 to 2024-2025, factoring in inflation and population growth, and incorporating buffers, to determine how much larger governments’ budgets are nowadays than where they “should be” or “could be.”
“Local governments are going to say that they need all this extra revenue. They don’t. They want the extra revenue, but they don’t need it. You know who needs it? You, the taxpayers who are footing the bill for large, bloated, excessive government,” Ingoglia said on Thursday.
Newly appointed Palm Beach County Mayor Sara Baxter, who attended Thursday’s news conference, agreed with Ingoglia’s conclusion: “I think we can do better,” she said.
Ingoglia declined to offer examples of Palm Beach County’s overspending, instead referring to reports issued by DOGE that are set to come out in the future with specific line items. Originally, Ingoglia said these audits would be out around October.
“It’s a bunch of stuff,” Ingoglia said Thursday. “It’s the growth in government itself. Most of government is personnel costs, so a lot of the growth in government over time, adding full-time equivalents, new people, full hires and giving people raises year after year.”
In early October, Ingoglia made a brief remark about how Palm Beach County’s paratransit costs tripled in the last two years during a news conference in Jacksonville with Gov. Ron DeSantis. Local leaders responded saying the paratransit costs had not risen as much as Ingoglia claimed.
Ingoglia also had offered reporters in August some early remarks about what DOGE inspectors had found so far during in-office visits in Palm Beach County.
The DOGE team “identified some things, some area of opportunities here in Palm Beach County, some things that, quite frankly, when I heard it were a little eye-popping,” Ingoglia told reporters outside the county government building on Aug. 19. “I don’t think that the voters in Palm Beach County would agree that that’s probably the best use of taxpayer dollars.”
Part of the DOGE efforts is to advocate for property tax relief, and Ingoglia has frequently referenced the expectation that there will be a referendum question on the November 2026 ballot, possibly to eliminate taxes for homesteaded properties.
“Everyone is feeling the pinch, and this is why property taxes, and it relates to affordability, is going to be such a big issue on the 2026 ballot,” Ingoglia said Thursday. “It’s going to be a big issue for constitutional amendment purposes. It’s going to be a big issue for people running for office. We’re going to have to solve this problem.”