By Michelle DeMarco
A top state official spearheading the Florida governor’s much-touted mission of cutting local government spending on programs, along with employee numbers and salaries, is quietly seeking to bolster his own state agency’s spending and employee ranks.
In a state Legislative Budget Request filed last week, Blaise Ingoglia, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ hand-picked new Chief Financial Officer, is seeking more than $600,000 and six full time employees to permanently establish a new “Florida Accountability and Fiscal Oversight Office,” with the provocative acronym “FAFO.” Its mission is to review local government data and “uncover the truth about how these government entities are using taxpayer funds, especially property taxes,” according to the budget request.
The $617,797 request includes $587,000 for employees and benefits, along with $60,000 for travel and other expenses, according to the documents. The funding comes on top of drawing on additional resources of the sprawling 2,000-employee Department of Financial Services.
In his request, Ingoglia indicated the new unit is duplicative of his already inherent powers. Under state law, he wrote, the CFO already has the statutory authority to “examine, audit, and investigate all local government entities that receive any funds from the State of Florida.” His office also has the power to take sworn testimony, issue subpoenas, and to assist law enforcement at both the state and federal levels.
“There’s a lot of irony at preaching government efficiency at the local level while growing your own bureaucracy,” said state Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat from Orlando.
Asked how the new office and additional employees squared with a mission of cutting government, Sydney Booker, Ingoglia’s communications director replied that the new state staffers “would allow DFS … to identify waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer funds” and “provide local governments with additional expertise in auditing themselves.”
“We look forward to saving taxpayers even MORE money through our FAFO Office!” she wrote in a statement to the Florida Trident.
‘No guardrails‘
Prior to publication, Booker did not respond to a follow-up question of why a new government entity was needed if the CFO has long had the statutory authority to investigate local government spending, as Ingoglia noted in his request for additional funding.
The name “FAFO” – which in the vernacular stands for “F-around and find out” – is the latest incarnation of the “Department of Government Efficiency” task force created in February by executive order under DeSantis’ Office of Policy and Budget. The task force is modelled after the federal government’s DOGE once headed by billionaire Elon Musk. It is set to expire on March 31, 2026.
The Florida Legislature approved the task force functions in language tucked into budget language in the final days of the 2025 legislative session, allowing DOGE to issue fines for non-compliance with the audits. The task force was limited to public records and technology to gather signs of “waste and bloat” by those cities and counties it selected for audit.
The head of Florida’s DOGE is Eric Soskin, a former U.S. Department of Transportation inspector general appointed, and later fired, by President Donald Trump. Soskin was hired by DeSantis in March at an annual salary of $197,621.
The immediate appearance of Ingoglia after his appointment as CFO as both the spokesperson and legal muscle on behalf of DOGE only bolstered suspicions that politics, not good government, was driving the selection of local governments for audit.
While DOGE was promoted as a fiscal watchdog, accusations by the governor and his CFO of widespread wasteful spending are widely seen as a vehicle for DeSantis to justify his push for eliminating property taxes in Florida, a primary source of revenue for local governments.
Thus far, a disproportionate number of the cities and counties targeted by DOGE are run by Democrats, including the city of Jacksonville, and Palm Beach, Broward, and Orange Counties. Ingoglia, who is not included as a member of DOGE under either the executive order or budget language, has written letters demanding local government records and, in Orange County, issued subpoenas in his power as CFO to 16 employees he accused of obstructing DOGE.
“I will not stand idly by while Floridians are forced to pay higher property taxes to fund wasteful and bloated government budgets,” Ingoglia said in a press release last month.
Questions arose, however, over whether Ingoglia is bullying local governments for political purposes.
“There is no question when one party controls all levers of government, it’s going to go after its enemies and its perceived enemies,” noted Bob Jarvis, a constitutional law professor with Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale. “There are no checks and balances. There are no guardrails.”
Fellow constitutional law professor, Ralph DeMeo, who teaches at both Florida State University and Stetson Law, agreed. “He’s trying to tread lightly on those governments he supports,” DeMeo said. “Reward your friends and punish your enemies.”
Targeting Democrat-run cities and agendas
In the subpoenas issued to Orange County, Ingoglia cast a wide net, requesting documents on a host of subjects, including “DEI” or diversity, equity and inclusion, “climate,” including electric vehicles, and records related to “Black History Project Inc., Caribbean Community Connection of Orlando, Inc., and the Central Florida Urban League,” among others.
In a July 21 letter to Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward, Ingoglia and DOGE officials sought information on bids, vendors, sole-source contracts, personnel compensation, DEI, “Green New Deal,” and grants, among other items.
Despite repeated requests from theTrident, questions to the CFO, including what triggered the subpoenas and why DEI is included in a financial audit, have gone unanswered.
Last week, Ingoglia held two press conferences, the first in Orlando, announcing his department’s “high level” findings of millions of dollars in wasteful spending over the past five years, but provided no specifics, saying they would be produced at a later date.
Responding to the accusations, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said Ingoglia was using “some fuzzy math” and attributed increased spending to several factors, including inflation, population surges, and a significant increase in the hiring of public safety personnel along with salary increases for police and fire. He also admonished Ingoglia for failing to address pressing issues including still-rising property insurance rates and an increasingly unaffordable cost of living in Florida.
“The CFO ought to get his own house in order before he starts looking in someone else’s house,” Demings fired back.
Hurling accusations of out-of-control spending has been a hallmark of Ingoglia for more than a decade. First elected to the House of Representatives in 2014, the Spring Hill Republican initially made a name for himself producing what he called “Government Gone Wild” videos that took aim at federal spending and immigration. “Government Gone Wild” is also the name of his political action committee, his X handle, and a refrain from his current campaign for CFO in the 2026 election.
The same week he filed his budget request for additional funding, Ingoglia appeared at a press conference in Jacksonville. Singling out Mayor Donna Deegan, a Democrat, and echoing similar claims he made in Orange County earlier last week, Ingoglia claimed that “every excuse in the book” would be offered by city officials to maintain “large, bloated bureaucracies.”
“Deegan’s spending is on steroids,” Ingoglia said, while again offering no details of his findings.
Deegan, who was elected in 2023 over a Republican, responded that the budgets being reviewed were “passed by super-majority Republican City Councils.”
So far, the local governments under scrutiny have publicly welcomed the outside audits, noting that their budgets are published online and open for full public review. But critics allege that no similar efforts are being made by Ingoglia and DOGE on the state level, such as the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by DeSantis on no-bid contracts for the hastily constructed immigrant detention camp, “Alligator Alcatraz,” in the federally protected Everglades.
“[The state has] no checks and balances, no accountability to what they’re doing,” said Palm Beach County Commissioner Maria Sachs, a Democrat whose county has also been targeted for audit.
Sachs said DOGE scrutiny could help improve local government efficiency, but only if done fairly. It shouldn’t be done to trample home rule or tell counties who they can and cannot hire. And it shouldn’t stop in Palm Beach County.
“Maybe the citizens need to do a DOGE of Tallahassee,” said Sachs. “See how they’re operating.”
Michelle DeMarco is an award-winning investigative reporter who returned to journalism after more than two decades in public service. Contact her at [email protected]
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