Months into his statewide barnstorming tour blasting local spending, Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia said Thursday he wants lawmakers to establish standard practices for city and county budgets to allow the public more scrutiny.
Speaking at the Winter Park offices of the libertarian group Americans for Prosperity, Ingoglia proposed legislation that would require local governments to post their budgets online 14 days ahead of a public hearing and maintain them for five years.
His proposal would also mandate cities and counties identify 10% of their budgets that they can cut, though it doesn’t require those governments to actually cut that funding, he said.
“What we noticed is that…only some of them keep historical budget information on their website,” he said. “We think it should be standard and transparent.”
An Orlando Sentinel review of local budgets earlier this year, however, found that the majority of the region’s local budget documents are maintained online, with files dating back years. Some of the region’s smallest towns and cities did not have their budgets publicly posted for the current or past years.
The bill will be filed by Collier County Republican state Rep. Yvette Benarroch.
“Too often, local budgets are passed in a way that regular people cannot follow,” Benarroch said. “The information is hard to find, hard to read … that’s not transparency. This bill is gonna fix that.”
Since being appointed CFO by Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this year, Ingoglia has circled the state as a loud critic of local budgets, including Orange County, which he contends overtaxes its residents by $148 apiece and overspends by $200 million annually.
“To date, we have exposed more than $1.86 billion in wasteful, excessive spending in just 11 local governments,” he said. “We believe as you count a lot of these local governments, we’re going to find many more billions of your tax dollars being wasted on things that shouldn’t be spent on and growing government.”
Conversely, his most recent Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight audit in the region targeted the city of Orlando, which he said spends at a “relatively sane” level and only misspends by about $22 million, using his calculation.
“The City of Orlando is actually reasonably fiscally responsible with your money,” he said.
Earlier this month, Ingoglia claimed Palm Beach County government spending has surpassed inflation and population growth by more than $344 million this year, which he said is the largest “raw number” of alleged overspending identified in the state so far.
He also claimed Broward County overspent by about $190 million this year.
Ingoglia’s formula charts the growth of a government’s general fund since 2019, adjusting for the Consumer Price Index and population growth to determine what he deems an appropriate spending level.
His calculations have been questioned by local officials who contend the methodology doesn’t include things the state requires cities and counties to fund. In Seminole County, for example, such mandates have increased by 71% since 2020, officials say.
In Orange County, Mayor Jerry Demings argued that the strain of being the nation’s most-visited tourism destination contributes to the county’s rising budget.
Local officials have also cited the ever-rising salaries of public safety personnel, as well as the cost of construction materials, equipment and other goods.