JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 From funding for a local LGBTQ group, sidewalks, excessive overtime and the airport HoloDonna, the newly published Statewide DOGE report lays out as much as $63 million in Jacksonville city spending it deems fraud, waste or abuse. <\/p>\n
The report\u2019s release comes months after state auditors descended on Jacksonville<\/a> and a dozen other municipalities throughout the state.<\/p>\n $500,000 of excessive overtime, including eight employees who averaged more than 700 hours each in a single year, is just one of the Jacksonville expenses deemed \u201cexcessive\u201d in the report.<\/p>\n Others include $7.5 million spent on a one-mile stretch of sidewalk, $75,000 for the airport HoloDonna<\/a> and $1.9 million for cultural grants.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, here we are. We got proof,\u201d Councilmember Rory Diamond (R-District 13) said.<\/p>\n Diamond said he hopes the report will help guide council members as they craft next year\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have overtime going on. We have a special assistant to the mayor who is getting paid $105 an hour for part-time work. I mean this is just a waste of money,\u201d Diamond said.<\/p>\n >>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n But Councilmember Jimmy Peluso (D-District 7) argued the report is just noise, noting it falls far short of identifying the $200 million of excess spending alleged by Florida\u2019s CFO<\/a> back in September.<\/p>\n He also argued some of the critiques, like $54 million spent on sidewalks, are perfectly appropriate budget items.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just like kind of confusing. What is one man\u2019s waste is certainly not what our own constituents are telling us,\u201d Peluso said.<\/p>\n The report also took aim at spending it characterized as \u201cDEI\u201d.<\/p>\n It knocked the city\u2019s police and fire pension fund for investing $30 million with Victory Park Capital, a company the report accused of prioritizing DEI and ESG.<\/p>\n The pension fund claimed its investments are compliant with a state law passed back in 2023 that banned government pension funds from being invested based on ESG principles.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Pension Fund updated its Investment Policy Statement in December 2023 to ensure full compliance with Florida law and formally notified all investment managers of the statutory requirements and the Fund\u2019s compliance policy,\u201d Jacksonville Police and Fire Pension Fund Executive Director Timothy Johnson said in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Fund\u2019s actions reflect a clear and consistent commitment to complying with state law while fulfilling its fiduciary duty to members and beneficiaries,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n Under the DEI banner, the report also listed $27,000 for local LGBTQ group JASMYN, $480,000 for the Cathedral Arts Project, which serves \u201cjustice-involved youth,\u201d and even the city\u2019s $538,000 spend on the Jacksonville Symphony.<\/p>\n Action News Jax reached out to all three groups for comment, but has not heard back.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just so bizarre to me. The idea of what DEI is and isn\u2019t is still such an amorphous thing,\u201d Peluso said.<\/p>\n But Duval DOGE Chair Ron Salem (R-Group 2 At-Large) said he sees those DEI-related spends as an easy starting point for making cuts.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we need to get with the organizations that we\u2019re funding and tell them no DEI or we\u2019ll pull it out or something like that,\u201d Salem said.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n The mayor\u2019s office sent a lengthy statement responding to the Florida DOGE report, downplaying many of the findings as \u201cnot new or hidden\u201d and highlighting internal efforts to improve the efficiency of city government.<\/p>\n \u201cThe results speak for themselves: reading scores are up, infrastructure projects are up, roads resurfaced are up, free park attendance is up, families on health insurance are up, veterans getting jobs are up, population growth is up. And our property tax rate remains the lowest of any big city in Florida, while the city\u2019s budget carries an A+ bond rating,\u201d a spokesperson for the mayor\u2019s office said in a statement, \u201cWe\u2019ve achieved all this through LEAN process improvements, automation and AI tools, and disciplined limits on staff growth and overtime while serving a rapidly growing population.\u201d<\/p>\n The mayor\u2019s office also emphasized city budgets are made as part of a collaborative effort with council and \u201cno budget passes without final approval by Council\u201d.<\/p>\n But Salem suggested some of the items identified as DEI were allocations made outside the control of council.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve worked very hard to get it all out, but somehow Mayor Deegan and her administration are continuing to fund some of this stuff and we\u2019ve got to figure out how that\u2019s occurring,\u201d Salem said.<\/p>\n Salem revived a previously canceled meeting of the DOGE committee after seeing the state report.<\/p>\n He plans to take a deep dive into the report\u2019s findings and suggestions during that meeting next Tuesday.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 From funding for a local LGBTQ group, sidewalks, excessive overtime and the airport HoloDonna, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[982,67271,56464,4151,3094,67274,9326,67273,28,62322,67269,969,116,118,117,67272,971,55599,970,58888,18639,2689,1432,13743,634,1375,10420,9324,65768,67270],"class_list":{"0":"post-137884","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-action_news","9":"tag-cathedral_arts_project","10":"tag-deegan","11":"tag-dei","12":"tag-doge","13":"tag-doge_committee","14":"tag-duval_doge_committee","15":"tag-duvalde","16":"tag-florida","17":"tag-florida_doge","18":"tag-hollow_donna","19":"tag-jack","20":"tag-jacksonville","21":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","22":"tag-jacksonville-news","23":"tag-jacksonville_symphony","24":"tag-jake","25":"tag-jake_stan","26":"tag-jake_stoan","27":"tag-jasmine","28":"tag-jimmy_peluso","29":"tag-lgbt","30":"tag-lgbtq","31":"tag-live","32":"tag-local","33":"tag-mayor","34":"tag-ron_salem","35":"tag-rory_diamond","36":"tag-salem","37":"tag-victory_park_capital"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}