Florida DOGE is aiming to find what it deems as wasteful, unnecessary spending by counties and cities across the state. And new details are surfacing about the scrutiny ahead.
Earlier this summer, municipalities received requests from the state Department of Government Efficiency to provide information on all revenue and expenses. In recent weeks, DOGE officials began conducting follow-up inquiries that have included visits to local government offices.
Gov. Ron DeSantis and his ally, Blaise Ingoglia, who last month was appointed by the governor as the state’s chief financial officer, have been the public faces of the initiative, painting a picture of the need to review local governments’ spending and expose any problems.
In recent weeks, Florida DOGE has been obtaining spending information from many county and city governments, from Hillsborough and Pinellas counties to Jacksonville to Orange County and the city of Orlando to Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Ingoglia has explained how DOGE officials, in part, have gone about identifying the information they want: Receiving tips about what they should be examining at certain government offices. Ingoglia said an anonymous tip line could soon be created.
Local governments have complied with the requests, often providing mountains of information within tens of thousands of files. Broward County leaders recently gave nearly 55,000 files to DOGE after its visit to their offices, the county said. Earlier this week, Orlando had readied 27,000 files for DOGE to review.
n anticipation of DOGE visits to Palm Beach County offices next week, county officials must respond to specific DOGE requests before or during the team’s arrival. This includes providing information on environmental goals — dubbed “Green New Deal” by DOGE — transportation, homeless services, property and leases, employee compensation and nearly 20 different requests under the umbrella of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Similarly in Orange County, DOGE auditors looked at personnel costs, contracts, salaries, and information used for any diversity, equity and inclusion training and details of electric vehicle purchases. And in the city of Orlando, DOGE had mentioned in a letter to Mayor Buddy Dyer about 50 different data points under review, including salary data, contracts of at least $10,000, and spending and programming in the city’s Equity, Multicultural Affairs and Hispanic Office for Local Assistance.
Since starting the audits, Ingoglia said the DOGE teams are finding “pretty egregious examples of waste, fraud and abuse.”
While he didn’t provide specific examples of such waste, fraud and abuse, Ingoglia said generally, local government officials feel as though they cannot cut any parts of their budgets. “This is a reflex from the local government because they want to keep the amount of income stream that they have right now,” he said.
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