The fight over Florida DOGE's audit of Hillsborough escalates
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Florida's chief financial officer, Blaise Ingoglia, says his state DOGE review shows Hillsborough County has a spending problem, but the county official tasked with preparing Hillsborough's budget isn't buying it.
Why it matters: Ingoglia believes that Tampa Bay's most populous county has overspent by $279 million. So far, his examples add up to less than 1% of the amount in dispute.
Driving the news: Ingoglia said last week that after reviewing Hillsborough's spending from the last five years, he found that they exceeded "the amount that would account for population growth and inflation."
- County administrator Bonnie Wise then rebutted that conclusion in a five-page memo to commissioners, the Tampa Bay Business Journal first reported.
- She said that while Hillsborough's budget rose $859 million during that time, this wasn't due to reckless spending.
Zoom in: Almost half of that spending was associated with public safety, including the sheriff's office and fire rescue. Another 21% went toward maintaining the county's AAA bond rating.
- And, Wise said, the CFO's $279 million figure doesn't account for "significant service deficits" that existed five years ago.
- The county has since addressed some of those deficits, building four new fire stations, repairing more than 400,000 feet of sidewalks, and repaving 600 miles of roads.
The big picture: Ingoglia has leveled similar accusations against Orange, Alachua, and Broward counties, as well as the City of Jacksonville, using the same "excessive, wasteful spending" language in his public statements.
- He made clear he didn't perform a forensic audit as part of the DOGE-ing, but would instead provide examples of bloat.
The latest: On Wednesday, Ingoglia previewed what he considered "wasteful spending" across the counties and cities he visited.
- To back his finding that Hillsborough misspent a quarter billion dollars, he cited two examples: training for its employees about "personal biases" and employee vehicle allowances, which together total $1.5 million.
What they're saying: "As your County Administrator, please know that I am always supportive of initiatives that explore opportunities to become more efficient," Wise said in her memo.
- "In addition to being cost-efficient," she added, "I must make recommendations ... that I believe will keep the public safe."
The other side: Commissioner Joshua Wostal (R) tells Axios that he finds Ingoglia's methodology to be "reasonable and fair," pointing out that the CFO acknowledged that "some of this would be subjective."
- "Let's pretend he's off by even 50%," Wostal says. "That would still mean $135 million a year of waste."
Ingoglia's office didn't respond to Axios' request for comment, but he has said that he expects "big-government apologists" and the "career tax-and-spend politicians" would "come out and try to defend their budgets."