CFO Ingoglia blazes path across Florida with same \u2018government gone wild\u2019 message that launched his rise<\/a><\/p>\nAmong the other questions Schweers asked of DFS were these: What made the postcard a threat? How many other people has he investigated, or even sent armed law enforcement officials after, just for being critical of his agency? And finally: How much did this ridiculous exercise cost?<\/p>\n
Dishing it out<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a very significant question, because Ingoglia \u2014 who was given his position by Gov. Ron DeSantis after Florida\u2019s elected CFO, Jimmy Patronis, ran for Congress \u2014 recently appointed himself Supreme Arbiter of Wasteful Government Spending. He\u2019s been prancing from city to city (at untold expense) indicting local governments on spurious charges of waste, which he\u2019s measuring by a bogus calculation that compares their current spending with their pre-COVID budgets. His first target was Orange County;\u00a0 since then he\u2019s mostly hit other cities and counties with Democratic majorities, though he also swung by Seminole County after the Sentinel\u2019s Scott Maxwell called him out for ignoring their budget numbers.<\/p>\n
In almost every stop, Ingoglia has failed to point out specific, significant over-spending. The closest he came was in deriding the placement of a hologram in Jacksonville\u2019s airport \u2014 and then viciously mocking the city of Orlando\u2019s poet laureate program. (That cheap shot revealed a lot about his tactics: If he\u2019d actually investigated the city program, he would have found that the two poets who have held the position so far were probably among the hardest-working people in city government, reaching thousands of people with the power of written and spoken words. The newest laureate plans to use her mental-health background to help victims of human trafficking and domestic violence find comfort and healing. Yep, that\u2019s the kind of thing Ingoglia makes fun of.)<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s a perfectly valid question: How much money did Ingoglia waste with the early-morning visit to the O\u2019Garas\u2019 home? Those officers \u2014 however many there were \u2014 drove to Largo from somewhere. A state employee database shows that DFS officers make between $63,000 and $111,000 a year. What did it cost taxpayers for officers to have a chat on the O\u2019Garas\u2019 stoop while their granddaughter watched wide-eyed?<\/p>\n
It goes without saying, of course, that this money wasn\u2019t just wasted. It was directed toward an effort to intimidate and silence people whose only crime was in expressing their contempt for him, personally. And it failed, as an avalanche of contemptuous response to this stunt has proved.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t be afraid<\/p>\n
As Americans, speaking truth to power was something the O\u2019Garas had the right \u2014 perhaps even the obligation \u2014 to do. We hope this was an isolated case. But Ingoglia, along with Gov. Ron DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier, seem to believe they should have a monopoly on belittling, bullying and criticising political opponents, often using misleading or downright false claims.<\/p>\n
So here\u2019s what we ask of our readers: If you\u2019ve been contacted by someone in state government who bullied or threatened you \u2014 or, God forbid, showed up at your door with guns \u2014 speak up. And if you\u2019re angry about what happened to the O\u2019Garas, and the way Ingoglia is harassing local government, don\u2019t be afraid to say that too.<\/p>\n
It takes courage to protest, which is why our state\u2019s leaders think they can crush opposition with intimidation. But Floridians need to know when their leaders are willing to go to such extremes, and if they are capable of understanding when they\u2019ve stepped over the line.<\/p>\n
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Executive Editor Roger Simmons and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com<\/p>\n
Originally Published: October 13, 2025 at 9:36 AM EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Floridians criticize their elected (or unelected) officials, they shouldn\u2019t have to fear armed law enforcement showing up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2853,482,139,141,140,109],"class_list":{"0":"post-2227","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-editorials","9":"tag-opinion","10":"tag-orlando","11":"tag-orlando-headlines","12":"tag-orlando-news","13":"tag-social"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2227","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=2227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}