Q&A – DOGEing Florida’s Local Governments
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Social: @brianmuddradio
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Today’s entry: Good Morning Brian!!!! Thank you & Joel for your morning show and all the great information your show airs. I am Somewhat of a long-time listener (10 years) since I’ve been living in your listening area. Please report the state of the affairs of St Lucie County from the DOGE findings. I have lived there for 10 years now and feel, that there have been a lot of progressive policy and undertakings in SLC/PSL.
Bottom Line: I appreciate the note and will be happy to report the DOGE findings of St. Lucie County with you if/when we get them. St. Lucie isn’t among the first round of announced in Florida DOGEings that will take place. With that said this is a good opportunity to breakdown Florida’s new DOGE program and what’s now underway.
In February Governor DeSantis announced Florida’s incarnation of DOGE – which is in addition to the quasi-DOGE program the state has had in place since 2007 – through a voter approved constitutional amendment. At the time DeSantis laid out these objectives:
- Florida will abolish an additional 70 boards and commissions this year
- Florida will conduct a deep dive into all facets of college and university operations and spending and make recommendations to the Board of Governors and State Board of Education to eliminate any wasteful spending.
- Florida will utilize AI to supplement ongoing efforts to review operations at our state agencies and identify more ways to cut unnecessary spending and eliminate bureaucracy.
- Florida will aid DOGE’s federal efforts to save taxpayers’ money by returning unused or surplus federal dollars allocated to the state.
The first four were/are aimed at ways the state government could operate more efficiently. As we quickly saw this led to the state sending over $800 million back to the federal government in unused/unneeded funds and the state task force will continue to DOGE the state’s agencies through March 31st of next year.
But the fifth focused on local governments:
- State task force will look into local government expenditures by utilizing publicly available county and municipal spending records to expose bloat within local governance.
That’s the piece that’s now in play. There were two missing pieces that were needed in order for the local DOGEing to take place. 1) Money and 2) A CFO to lead the effort. The new state budget that kicked in on July 1st provided funding for the state to establish a task force to DOGE local governments, and with Blaise Ingoglia now serving as Florida’s CFO the pieces are in place.
In March, every local government received a letter from the Office of the Governor, under the heading of Florida DOGE stating that they’d be undergoing an assessment by the state’s EOG DOGE Team. In that notice the state requested information pertaining to the finances of local governments with a deadline of April 8th. As the notice stated: Any community that doesn’t comply with request will be presumed to be in “possible statutory violation and in need of assistance”.
It’s my understanding that all local governments complied with the information request but that the answers by some raised red flags which has become the basis for the priority under which the state task force is set to begin DOGE audits this week. Four governments are known to be first up for audits. Broward, Manatee and Orange Counties, and the City of Gainesville. In announcing the first three onsite audits in these local governments the state also indicated another 10-15 (currently unnamed) local governments will be subjected to DOGE audits in the coming weeks.
In total, Florida has 479 local governments (67 counties and 412 municipalities). It’s unclear how many will be audited by the state and how long the process may take. The first four audits will begin Thursday. I’ll keep you posted as to what’s discovered and the rollout of any DOGEing in St. Lucie and other counties throughout South Florida and the Treasure Coast.
It’s my belief that Governor DeSantis will take these very seriously and the audits could become extensive throughout the state. Independent of the inherent benefit of uncovering potential waste (or worse) of taxpayers' dollars, this initiative also figures to serve Governor DeSantis’s objective to end property taxes on homesteaded properties. Florida's CFO Blaise Ingoglia told me he doesn’t believe sales taxes would necessarily have to rise in order to eliminate homesteaded property taxes. I suspect the state’s DOGE Task Force will seek to evidence that to communities over the next year.