{"id":300199,"date":"2026-06-08T17:57:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T17:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/300199\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T17:57:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T17:57:18","slug":"state-cfo-attacks-jacksonville-spending-city-calls-the-criticism-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/300199\/","title":{"rendered":"State CFO attacks Jacksonville spending; city calls the criticism politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia<\/a> took aim at Jacksonville city government Monday, claiming the city wasted $275.7 million in taxpayer money in the 2025-26 budget \u2014 a sharp jump<\/a> from the $199 million in excessive spending he claimed the previous year.<\/p>\n

Ingoglia made the announcement at a news conference in Jacksonville Beach, flanked by state lawmakers and advocates from Americans for Prosperity.<\/p>\n

The chief financial officer has been conducting a statewide spending accountability tour, publicly calling out both Republican- and Democrat-led governments for what he describes as wasteful and excessive spending.<\/p>\n

Ingoglia said his office uses a formula it calls the FAFO methodology \u2014 base budget plus inflation plus population growth \u2014 to determine what a government\u2019s budget should reasonably be, then compares that figure to actual spending.<\/p>\n

For Jacksonville, the formula applied 25.5% cumulative inflation and 10.49% population growth from the 2019-20 budget year through the current 2025-26 budget. Ingoglia said his office also added a 5% buffer \u2014 roughly $69 million \u2014 for governments with budgets exceeding $2 billion.<\/p>\n

Even with those adjustments, Ingoglia said Jacksonville\u2019s budget grew 61% beyond what his formula allows \u2014 producing the $275.7 million excessive spending figure for 2025-26 alone.<\/p>\n

Looking back across six budget years, Ingoglia said the cumulative total of excessive spending in Jacksonville reaches $623 million \u2014 and that virtually all of it occurred in the last three years.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of the excessive and wasteful spending that has happened in the city of Jacksonville has happened over the last three years,\u201d Ingoglia said, making a reference to Mayor Donna Deegan\u2019s administration. \u201cI don\u2019t think that is a coincidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Response to CFO<\/p>\n

The Mayor\u2019s Office distributed a statement in response to Ingoglia\u2019s claims:<\/p>\n

Once again, the state CFO has swooped into town without any specifics and more numbers pulled out of thin air. It\u2019s another hyper-partisan exercise designed to bully cities and lay the groundwork for passage of a property tax cost shift<\/a> that will hurt the vast majority of people.<\/p>\n

Jacksonville is already a low tax city with a lean and efficient budget that delivers the greatest return for our citizens. People want parks, libraries, pools, roads, and lower housing and healthcare costs. That\u2019s not waste. That\u2019s providing a good quality of life for a world class city. And that\u2019s what we\u2019ve been focused on since day one.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mayor\u2019s Office also pointed out that while the CFO claimed the wasteful spending was only in the last three years, but he said otherwise in a\u00a0September 2025 news conference<\/a>\u00a0in Jacksonville.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe spending is not just a Democrat problem. This is a Democrat and a Republican problem,\u201d Ingoglia said back then.<\/p>\n

Statewide numbers<\/p>\n

Jacksonville is not alone<\/a> on Ingoglia\u2019s list. His office has now reviewed more than a dozen jurisdictions across Florida, exposing what he says is more than\u00a0$2.5 billion\u00a0in total excessive spending statewide. Among the figures he cited:<\/p>\n

Palm Beach County:\u00a0$344 million<\/p>\n

Miami-Dade County:\u00a0$302 million<\/p>\n

Orange County:\u00a0$300 million<\/p>\n

Hillsborough County:\u00a0$278 million<\/p>\n

Broward County:\u00a0$189 million<\/p>\n

City of Miami:\u00a0$94 million<\/p>\n

Manatee County:\u00a0$112 million<\/p>\n

Alachua County:\u00a0$84 million<\/p>\n

Flagler County:\u00a0$59 million<\/p>\n

Nassau County:\u00a0$53 million<\/p>\n

Seminole County:\u00a0$48 million<\/p>\n

St. Petersburg:\u00a0$49 million<\/p>\n

St. Lucie County:\u00a0$46 million<\/p>\n

Citrus County:\u00a0$39 million<\/p>\n

City of Fort Pierce:\u00a0$10 million<\/p>\n

City of Orlando:\u00a0$22 million<\/p>\n

Ingoglia noted that the city of Orlando, while still showing $22 million in waste, is a \u201cpretty good steward of tax dollars\u201d relative to other jurisdictions.<\/p>\n

This story was produced by News4Jax<\/a>, a Jacksonville Today news partner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia took aim at Jacksonville city government Monday, claiming the city wasted $275.7 million in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-300199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300199","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=300199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}