{"id":216343,"date":"2026-04-02T17:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T17:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/216343\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T17:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T17:57:08","slug":"blaise-ingoglia-pans-overspending-in-st-lucie-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/216343\/","title":{"rendered":"Blaise Ingoglia pans overspending in St. Lucie County"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">CFO\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.myfloridacfo.com\/about\/meet-the-cfo\" data-wpel-link=\"external\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Blaise Ingoglia<\/a> continues to slam local government budgets, with St. Lucie County being the latest target.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">As <a href=\"https:\/\/floridapolitics.com\/archives\/786933-blaise-ingoglia-targets-citrus-county-for-wasteful-spending\/\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">he has<\/a> in <a href=\"https:\/\/floridapolitics.com\/archives\/781072-blaise-ingoglia-fort-pierce-overspending-by-10m-in-local-budget\/\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">many<\/a> other <a href=\"https:\/\/floridapolitics.com\/archives\/776709-blaise-ingoglia-berates-st-petersburg-for-overtaxing-residents-by-49-4m\/\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">places<\/a>, the Spring Hill Republican hammered St. Lucie officials for what he dubbed excessive spending in recent years.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Calling himself a \u201clobbyist on behalf of the taxpayers,\u201d Ingoglia said even accounting for population growth, local budgets since the benchmark of Fiscal Year 2019-20 have contained more than $46 million in overspending.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He argued the government should have given the money back to taxpayers, and said even if millage is held the same or reduced, the net result is a property tax increase if values appreciate.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The St. Lucie County general fund budget has increased by more than 76% over the last six years, Ingoglia said, fueling a \u201cmassive expansion of government.\u201d The budget is up from $162 million six years ago to $285 million.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Ingoglia argued that population density increasing in a \u201cgrowing county\u201d like St. Lucie should decrease per-capita costs for services, as government \u201cfinds more efficiencies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">With 72,000 new residents, the government hired 212 new employees, with only 22 of them being Sheriff\u2019s deputies.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cThey\u2019re adding legacy costs to the budget,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He advocated for a 1 mill cut to property taxes.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">As he has in other markets, the CFO tied his local message to a state push to deliver a \u201clarger homestead exemption, if not get rid of property taxes altogether.\u201d That\u2019s an endorsement of the Governor\u2019s still undefined proposal to provide relief to primary homeowners.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Ingoglia\u2019s statement here is especially notable because DeSantis hasn\u2019t floated expanding the homestead exemption yet in months of workshopping the concept.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Ingoglia said his preference is to eliminate homestead taxes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CFO\u00a0Blaise Ingoglia continues to slam local government budgets, with St. Lucie County being the latest target. As he&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[2855,9935,171,173,172,8191,19809,1402],"class_list":{"0":"post-216343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-port-st-lucie","8":"tag-blaise-ingoglia","9":"tag-budget","10":"tag-port-st-lucie","11":"tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","12":"tag-port-st-lucie-news","13":"tag-property-tax","14":"tag-spending","15":"tag-st-lucie-county"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216343","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=216343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}