Blaise Ingoglia claims St. Pete wasted $49M, but the mayor calls the claims ‘unsubstantiated’

During a press conference, Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, Blaise Ingoglia, said his team determined the City of St. Petersburg used $49 million for what the state’s DOGE office consider “excessive” spending. The city’s mayor says the claims are “unsubstantiated.”

Wednesday, Ingoglia held a press conference at The Birchwood, in St. Pete, where he slammed public officials and said the city has engaged in “wasteful spending.”

“For 11,500 new people coming into the city of Saint Pete, they added 371 new employees. That doesn’t make sense,” Ingoglia said.

When 10 Tampa Bay News reached out to St. Pete officials for comment, the city provided a 98-page report authored by Ingoglia’s DOGE called “Report on Local Government Spending.”

While it is not fully clear what Ingoglia or DOGE define as “wasteful,” the report argues that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) activities are considered “evidence” of this type of spending. In contrast, the report cites law enforcement, firefighting and emergency management as examples of “core government functions.”

Within the report, one section dedicated to St. Pete says property tax revenues in the city, as well as spending, have “grown much more rapidly than population and inflation,” and it flags Pride events, staffing, DEI and climate-related expenses.

The report highlights the reductions in millage rates, qualifying them as modest, but it is critical of the use of the city’s budget allocations for DEI programs and policies. In St. Petersburg, the budget is reviewed and approved by the City Council, whose members are elected officials.

“Florida DOGE’s site visits identified The City of St. Petersburg as having some of the most egregious examples of wrongful DEI among the locations visited, and elected officials have publicly defended these programs,” the report reads, and lists items considered as “wasteful” or “excessive,” but at times is not specific.

The list of items includes expenses like $307,000 spent on carbon reduction implementation and electric vehicle promotion experts as part of a sustainability action plan.

“Tens of thousands of dollars spent on small-dollar grants to organizations,” the report reads, “many with extreme ideological missions to promote DEI objectives or other inappropriate missions.”

The report is also critical of “$1.1 million in salary increases in the Mayor’s Office since Fiscal Year 2019-20 – with two members of the staff receiving 60%+ in raises.”

In addition, the report characterizes salaries for the Chief Equity Officer, LGBTQ Coordinator, Cultural Affairs Director, Community Justice Liaison and employees within the Office of Supplier Diversity as “DEI examples,” and then states that the city has engaged in “unlawful race, ethnicity, and gender-based hiring targets for 80% of positions.”

The report states that 43% of city workers are minority staff, saying it exceeds “the minority share of the city population.”

“Nearly $100,000 per year spent to fund multiple ‘Pride’ events, including those that groom minors, such as a ‘Pride Youth and Family Day,'” the report reads, citing this example as DEI spending.

Mayor Ken Welch disagreed with the characterizations of the use of the city’s budget. In a statement sent by his office to 10 Tampa Bay News, Welch said:

“Today, Florida’s CFO asserted statements about the City of St. Petersburg’s budget and said that any response or rebuttal from local government would just be a ‘spin.’ He made it clear that any clarification or correction would be local governments ‘justifying excessive and wasteful spending.’ We just received the report and while we work to verify his statements, the City of St. Petersburg remains transparent throughout our budget process. As we do every year, all year round, we encourage residents with questions about the City’s budget to review the documents posted on our website at www.stpete.org/budget.”

“Additionally, we encourage residents to view our property tax page for full, transparent information on how the City’s budget is allocated. St. Petersburg has nothing to hide, we value the transparency. Please see webpage here – http://www.stpete.org/propertytax,” the mayor added in his response. “Recent national events remind us of the harm that false and politically motivated official statements can create. The CFO’s claims are unsubstantiated and targeted to support the obvious political agenda of justifying property tax changes, regardless of the impacts on police and fire service delivery by local governments. We will continue to operate based on facts, not conjecture.”

From the City Council, Chair Lisset Hanewicz and Council Member Gina Driscoll did not have a comment at the moment.

Council Member Corey Givens told 10 Tampa Bay News: “St. Petersburg taxpayers deserve transparency. The DOGE report only reinforces what we have already known. Scrutiny is needed at every level of government to foster public trust.”