Florida CFO Ingoglia says St. Lucie County overtaxed residents by $46 million

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (CBS12) — Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia used a Port St. Lucie news conference Wednesday to accuse St. Lucie County of excessive spending and to press for aggressive property tax cuts statewide, arguing that local governments have become bloated while homeowners struggle with affordability.

“Taxpayers are seeing that government is going wild once again with our tax dollars,” Ingoglia said.

Speaking to reporters and local officials, Ingoglia said his office’s review found St. Lucie County had “overtaxed and overspent” residents by about $46 million, based on a formula that compares current spending with what he said the budget should have been after adjusting a pre-COVID baseline for inflation and population growth.

“Governments are wasting money left and right. But then they continue to do the same thing. They cry poorer, poorer and poorer. They’re saying we can’t cut because we need all of this of our big bloated budget,” he said.

Ingoglia said the county’s general fund budget grew from $162 million in the 2019-20 budget year to $285 million in the 2025-26 budget year, an increase of $123 million, or 76%, over six years. He said the county added roughly 72,452 residents during that period, along with 212 full-time employees, though only 22 of those were sheriff’s deputies.

“Your budgets are not going up because of essential services. Your budgets are going up unfortunately because local governments think that you are an endless ATM and they can tap into you anytime they want money,” Ingoglia said.

He says it’s clear to him that this has to change.

“When we started looking at these numbers and how much you’re actually wasting, this is money that could’ve been allocated to somewhere else,” Ingoglia said.

“Do you feel like you’re serving the taxpayers well when we hear there’s all these millions of dollars of taxpayer money wasted?” we asked St. Lucie County Commission Chairperson Jamie Lee Fowler. “From what I know and how I know that we’re spending the money ’cause obviously the agenda items come before us, I don’t see where there’s fluff. We are doing infrastructure, we’re doing water, we’re doing drainage. We’re doing the needs,” Fowler explained.

“What are you gonna do about this now after he put all this out there for the public to see?” we asked James Clasby, St. Lucie County Commissioner. “Right, well we’ve already been working on this prior to him coming here. This is just great. I believe this is more ammunition for me to push for the cuts I’m looking to do,” Clasby said.

The CFO said his office has now reviewed 16 local governments across Florida and identified about $2.127 billion in what he called excessive and wasteful spending in a single year. He said Palm Beach County ranked worst so far at $344 million, followed by Miami-Dade County at $302 million and Hillsborough County at $278 million. He also stressed that the spending concerns cross party lines, citing both Republican- and Democratic-leaning jurisdictions.

Ingoglia framed the issue as part of a broader statewide affordability crisis, saying rising property values have produced higher tax collections even where local governments kept tax rates flat or slightly lowered them. He argued that local officials have used that added revenue to expand government rather than return money to taxpayers.

Under the methodology outlined at the event, Ingoglia’s office starts with the 2019-20 local budget, which he described as the last “pre-COVID” budget, and indexes it forward for inflation and population growth. Any spending above that level is deemed excessive. He said the approach is modeled on taxpayer-protection systems used in states such as Colorado and Utah.

Critics, he acknowledged, are likely to challenge both his numbers and his method. But Ingoglia insisted the figures come directly from local budgets and said he was not conducting a “forensic audit” line by line at this stage. He said those more detailed audits could come later through his constitutional audit authority.

Ingoglia also used the event to advocate for a constitutional amendment that would deliver major property tax relief, ideally by eliminating property taxes on homesteaded properties or, failing that, by approving the most aggressive tax cut lawmakers believe could pass statewide in November 2026.

He argued that St. Lucie County alone could reduce its property tax burden by just over 1 mill without harming core services. For a homeowner with a tax-assessed value of $300,000, he said, that would amount to about $445 in annual savings, not including school taxes.

Throughout the news conference, Ingoglia rejected arguments that cuts would necessarily hurt police, fire or emergency services, saying governments often invoke those departments first to defend larger budgets. He said public safety should be prioritized while administrative growth is reined in.

The event, hosted with support from Americans for Prosperity and attended by local lawmakers and county officials, underscored what Ingoglia said will be an ongoing statewide campaign. He predicted voters would strongly support a major tax-cut amendment if one reaches the ballot, and said his office will continue reviewing local governments and later turn its attention to school districts.

Earlier this year, Ingoglia announced that his office found nearly $10.5 million in wasteful spending by Fort Pierce city leaders.

Ingoglia says his team has identified nearly $2-billion in wasteful spending last year alone, among 13 ‘Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight’ (FAFO) reviews.

Tags: