Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia announced the preliminary findings of the Florida Department of Government Efficiency's audit of Broward County, alleging that the county has tallied nearly $190 million of wasteful spending in the past five years.
Ingoglia unveiled the findings Tuesday at a press conference at Keiser University's Pembroke Pines Campus.
" They're expanding way past inflation and population growth. So when your local governments say that they are, they're not being exactly truthful to you. There's no other way to put it," he said.
Florida DOGE performed an onsite audit of the county's finances that began July 31. But the report from that audit, which Ingoglia calls a "DOGE report" has not yet been released, instead Ingoglia presented the findings of what he calls a "FAFO audit." FAFO stands for the Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight, and its abbreviation is, like DOGE, a reference to a meme.
He laid out the methodology for a FAFO audit which spanned from 2019-2024:
" We increased the budget every year for inflation and population, and then got to a number of where the budget should be today … we added not one but two buffers on top of that, a 5% buffer and a 10% buffer…That's the number where the budget probably should be or could be," he said.
Ingoglia did not specify if he used Broward or statewide inflation data in those calculations; however, using those metrics, Ingoglia said Broward's budget should have only increased by $427 million. Ingoglia reasoned that the county's actual $617 million budget increase in the last 5 years constitutes $190 million of "wasteful spending." Broken out over five years, that represents around $35 million over overspend per year. Broward's general fund for 2025 is around $2 billion.
"They could very easily offer affordability relief in the form of property tax relief if they cut their large, wasteful, bloated budget." he said
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Ingoglia did not give specifics on any particular instances of wasteful spending saying that he "didn't want to get ahead of the DOGE report", but he contends that the growth of Broward's budget is proof enough. He did not give a timeline for the release of the full report.
" The government expansion itself is waste, fraud, and abuse. The government expanding is the excessive spending itself," he said.
Ingoglia also stumped for a potential ballot initiative in 2026 for property tax relief. Governor Ron DeSantis has touted a plan that would eliminate property taxes on homesteaded properties in Florida.
" This is an issue — property taxes — that transcends a lot of different spaces in our economy. The people have been demanding property tax relief. We should give it to them on the November 2026 ballot," he said.
The results of the audit underdelivered what was promised by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who claimed in April that Broward County's budget had increased by 82% in the past five years. Ingoglia said Tuesday that number was just over 47%.
Ingoglia also admitted that the Broward Sheriff's Office was not part of this audit, despite being Broward's single largest expenditure.
" What I will tell you is that we have received numerous inquiries about the sheriff's budget here. All I can say with that is that we should be protecting people, but we should also balance the taxpayer with making sure we keep people safe at the same time," he said.
Last year, BSO's newly unveiled training facility was found in an audit to have exceeded original construction estimates by more than double, from an expected cost of $34 million to a final cost of nearly $75 million.
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