Florida Is DOGEing Too & The Last Man Standing – Top 3 Takeaways – February 25th, 2025
- Florida does DOGE. As we watch wait and will see what will be with federal government employees who faced two deadlines on Monday 1) to report to the office and 2) to respond to the DOGE inspired email from the Office of Personal Management asking employees for five things they did last week... Governor DeSantis announced that Florida is officially doing DOGE. On Monday DeSantis said the state has officially established a DOGE Task Force that aims to do in Florida what Elon Musk’s team DOGE has been doing in Washington, D.C. During his Monday presser the governor said Florida already has the lowest number of government employees per capita in the country, but that there’s room to go much smaller. As DeSantis said: There’s hundreds of these things. A lot of people have never heard of them, but they’re there. What are these things? Are they actual swamp creatures straight out of the Everglades or entities of indeterminate origins? Nope, the governor noted that there are 70 boards and commissions established across the state with over 900 positions that operate within them that you probably never knew existed and that if he has it his way won’t for too much longer. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. His new DOGE task force will be DOGEing, in his words, the State University System with an eye towards eliminating excesses and “bloat of personnel” along with any courses that run counter to the state’s anti-DEI directives. Speaking of DEI, DeSantis said all government contracts will be reviewed to make sure that they haven’t been and aren’t being rewarded based on DEI considerations. One of the most notable places DeSantis said the state’s DOGE will review – what's happening closest to you. He said that DOGEing will be taking place at the local level. This includes DOGE teams showing up at the county level and conducting audits. How many locals, for example, would like to see DOGE dig into expenditures within PBC for the purpose of evaluating local government efficiency? I can tell you that for what I pay in property taxes each year I'm all ears.
- DeSantis said that local budgets have ballooned along with Florida’s economy and there’s a need for efficiency. I agree. What we’ve commonly seen locally, with most municipalities, is record high tax collections, especially from property taxes, followed by record high budgets that spend every penny as opposed to reducing mileage rates to help with affordability challenges throughout our communities. I’d love nothing more than to see DOGE go through every municipality. Can you imagine what they’d see if they did? How efficiently do you think your local government(s) is operating. As part of DeSantis’s DOGE initiative, he’s calling on the legislature to pass legislation that would compel all local governments throughout the state to work with the DOGE Task Force. In total DeSantis has already eyed a billion dollars in savings and is looking to reduce state employment by 740 net positions (or only four tenths of one percent of the state’s employees). So, DOGE isn’t just for D.C., it’s coming to our state and before long, our communities (minus Elon Musk and Big Balls). Much like the pushback we’ve seen in Washington D.C., I’ll be surprised if we don’t see and hear more of the same with impacted agencies and governments across the state. But as for the idea of smaller, more efficient and responsive state and local governments? Sign me up. Any government body that says they couldn’t possibly operate any more efficiently is lying. Having transparency and the ability to truly see how efficient our local governments are operating, ongoing would no doubt cut down on corruption, the desire of unethical politicos to seek office, and to stay in office and lead to greater accountability. As I’ve highlighted recently, the federal government operates 667% less efficiently than the average business. DeSantis’s announcement reminded me of a study on local government efficiency I’d seen. The study published in the Journal of Public Economics entitled: The efficiency of local government: The role of privatization and public sector unions found that the private sector could operate public sector services at the local level an average of 30% more efficiently meaning 30% lower cost. It’s been great to see DOGE unload on the federal government’s inefficiencies. It’s also great to see DeSantis recognizing best practices that can be applied to the state, counties and municipalities. The legislature should follow through with what DeSantis is asking them to do.
- But back to what the original DOGE has already done. In advance of any potential firings on Monday derived from employees who refused to return to work or who didn’t respond to the email, here are the federal government agencies where the highest number of terminations have taken place in order: USAID, the IRS, the US Department of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Department of the Interior, Veterans Affairs, NASA, Homeland Security, Commerce, Energy, the EPA, Office of Personnel Management, Transportation Department, FDIC, National Science Foundations, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, General Services Administration and the Education Department. It’s worth mentioning because as we’ve seen the move to bring about greater efficiency had already been extended to 18 agencies preceding Monday. However, with the federal government consisting of 430 agencies, most of which nobody could name (perhaps even including some of the employees), yesterday’s effort is the big effort to drive efficiencies throughout the entirety of government. It will be interesting to see what’s next and how many people are left.