ORLANDO, Fla. — Orlando became the latest stop for Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia Friday as he travels the state in an effort to cut wasteful governmental spending.

Ingoglia has already released reports for Orange, Seminole and Hillsborough counties, among others, and says his office has calculated wasteful spending totaling $1.5 billion across nine municipalities.

What You Need To Know

Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia stopped in Orlando Friday to speak about wasteful spending in the city

During the stop, he defended the way his office calculates wasteful spending in a municipality on a macro level

While some local leaders have accused him of using calculations that do not account for all the things a municipality has to pay for, Ingoglia argues that “local government apologists” aren’t being honest with their constituents

During his speech Friday, Ingoglia said the way his office calculates what they beilieve is an appropriate budget is by taking a municipality’s last pre-COVID budget (FY 2019-2020), indexing the numbers forward each year taking population growth and inflation into account, and comparing those numbers to a city or county’s FY 2024-2025 budget. 

“And everything over that, we are deeming excessive and wasteful spending,” he said.

Ingoglia did not give any details on how population growth and inflation are used to calculate a municipality’s expected budget or if any other criteria are taken into account. Likewise, he did not release information about the specific formula used in the process so outside parties can attempt to duplicate his findings.

Leaders in those local governments, though, have taken exception with those calculations, and argue that Ingoglia’s formula doesn’t take a number of expenses into account.

After Ingoglia accused Seminole County of wastefully spending $48 million in October, Board of County Commissioners Chairman Jay Zembower said he was shocked by the accusations and frustrated at the lack of details from the state.

“Right now, we are really struggling with the pay increases for law enforcement,” Zembower said at the time. “Five years ago it was teachers. Seven years ago it was nurses. These are the types of market pressures that come to bear, outside of any legislative issues.”

Ingoglia pointed to the city of Orlando as proof that his formula produces a reasonable budget projection.

He said his office calculated that the city was overspending by $22 million, and argued that was tame compared to $190 million in Orange County, $199 million in Jacksonville and $278 million in Hillsborough County.

Decrying “local government apologists” who argued that his “calculations are unresonable and won’t work in the real world,” Ingoglia said during his speech that he believed it is the result, not the math that local government officials are upset about.

“Lets be clear: It’s not that they don’t like the formula, they just don’t like the results,” he said.

He said the $22 million in Orlando was still significant, though, and argued that he believed there is certainly more wastful spending that can be found in the City Beautiful.

“And this is just the general fund portion of the budget,” he said. “This doesn’t include schools — which I believe are some of the … worst offienders when it comes to wasteful spending.”

As it has been in previous appearances of this nature, Ingoglia’s argument is that growth in propulation doesn’t necessarily mean more government is needed.

“And here’s the sad state of affairs: Local governments have seen an increase in property values, a corresponding increase in property taxes. They’ve seen all of this money flow into their coffers, and they hardly ever think about giving it back to the taxpayers.

“They don’t think about the people that they are taking the money from, they just see all this money, extra money, they take it and they spend it.”

In early October, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said he believed Ingoglia was mainly using politics when deciding which municipalities to audit.

“We will respond with balance to whatever they say,” he said at the time about criticism from Ingoglia’s office. “But obviously, they have an agenda to attack different constituents and groups based on their personal beliefs and their political agendas.”

Speaking with Spectrum News after his speech, Ingoglia denied that he is doing anything other than trying to root out wasteful government spending wherever he can find it.

“My marching orders come from the taxpayers of the state of Florida,” he said. “I’m listening to people on Main Street, I’m listening to people at the grocery stores — they’re telling me that their tax bills have gotten out of hand. And you know what? Local governments know that their tax bills are out of hand.”

“So I’m speaking as an advocate to the taxpayer, and I will continue to do so,” he added. “Nobody tells me what to say, I’m just looking at the data, they just don’t like the results.”