They are ridiculed as the governor’s “DOGE goons.” Their work is faulted as factually wrong and politically motivated. They even added a new verb to the Florida lexicon: being “doge-d.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), created by executive order last year, has set its sights on mostly blue counties (Broward, Palm Beach, Orange) and bluish cities (Tampa, Gainesville and Jacksonville, among others).
Isn’t it odd how local politicians never seem to waste money in heavily Republican areas such as the Panhandle, Naples or The Villages?
Dateline: Tamarac
But the governor’s goon squad may finally be on to something.
DOGE has belatedly launched a long overdue mission of investigating how the city of Tamarac spends public money.
The west Broward city already is the focus of scrutiny by the Broward Office of Inspector General, and the Sun Sentinel has reported extensively for years on the city’s questionable financial decisions on its news and opinion pages.
A sampler:
Politicians in Tamarac need to stop ripping off taxpayers (editorial, April 5, 2021).
This free-spending city is still at risk for fraud and waste (news article, April 29, 2022).
Tamarac will scrap $75,000 travel budget (news article, May 13, 2022).
Tamarac finds a $500,000 political slush fund (editorial, May 20, 2026).
There’s much more, but you get the idea.
A long, long letter
On May 26, the governor’s office sent Tamarac’s city manager a four-page demand for documents covering spending over the past three years on everything from sole-source contracts to civic events to city-issued purchasing cards by parks and recreation workers.
The review was suggested by Tamarac residents who sent letters of complaint to the governor’s office, and by Mayor Michelle Gomez, she confirmed.
The mayor told the Editorial Board that she met with DOGE staff members in January when she was in the state capital for the annual “Broward Days” goodwill excursion.
“I took their concerns to the governor’s office,” Gomez said. “Me being there was not the first time they heard about issues with Tamarac … It is my fiscal responsibility as mayor to seek assistance to either prove we’re doing things right or we’re not. I believe in transparency. I have no problem with DOGE.”
City of Tamarac
Tamarac Vice Mayor Marlon Bolton once again put himself and colleagues in control of divving up public money, this time to $500,000 from a legal settlement.
Gomez is doing something right. She was re-elected to another four-year term on Friday because no one qualified to run against her.
Most questionable expenditures in Tamarac are tied to Vice Mayor Marlon Bolton.
By controlling three votes on the five-member commission, he has pushed to spend public money on concerts, festivals and other events and to promote commissioners’ political agendas, including his own “gas card giveaway” to needy residents.
Bolton successfully diverted $500,000 from a legal settlement over “forever chemicals” in city water to be controlled by commissioners, which likely means more self-promotion at taxpayer expense.
Bolton declined to comment on the state’s letter, which went to the city manager. “It would be inappropriate for me to characterize a process from which I was not included,” Bolton wrote.
City manager: ‘Nothing surprising’
Cities and counties face $1,000-a-day fines if they don’t cooperate in a doge-ing. The city emailed a vast amount of data to the governor’s office by the state’s June 9 deadline.
The governor’s people wanted a list of all Tamarac employees, their salaries and whether they work remotely or at City Hall. DOGE wants a copy of every document the city has given to the county inspector general since Jan. 1, 2025.
Speaking to the Editorial Board Friday, Tamarac City Manager Levent Sucuoglu said he was not worried.
“There’s nothing surprising. It’s a standard letter,” Sucuoglu said. He said the city undergoes a “vigorous” audit every year and he expects the state will find no problems in Tamarac.
After the state’s demand letter of May 26, Sucuoglu alerted his five elected bosses, but he did not mention it publicly even though the city has met twice since, so city taxpayers know nothing of the probe — until reading this editorial.
Fort Lauderdale in crosshairs
Indeed, the city of Fort Lauderdale got a similar letter.
As the Sun Sentinel’s Susannah Bryan reports, DOGE’s demand letter reads much like Tamarac’s, but it also requests a “purchase card transaction log, including card identifier, amount, vendor and justification.”
That’s a red flag.
Fort Lauderdale just released a scathing internal audit that revealed abuses in the use of city-issued credit cards, or P-cards, including $10,250 in Panthers hockey tickets, food and event parking, and $1,800 for leather luggage for members of the city’s Airport Advisory Board.
The spending abuses were revealed by city auditor Patrick Reilly, and some residents ask why City Manager Rickelle Williams has not yet disciplined any city employees.
Here’s the problem: That is precisely the kind of waste that DeSantis could use to build public support for his ballot proposal to expand Florida’s homestead exemption by drastically cutting property taxes.
DOGE may stand for government efficiency, but it also does the governor’s political dirty work. These two cities deserve a much closer look into their finances; we hope they get it. But we also believe the state will use any fiscal irresponsibility for its own propagandizing, and that would be a mistake.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.