JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia claimed excessive spending in Jacksonville continues to spiral during a stop in the city on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe question is, did the City of Jacksonville do a better job in the 25\/26 year? And the answer is not even close,\u201d said Ingoglia.<\/p>\n
Last year, he put excessive spending in Jacksonville at $199 million, but under this year\u2019s budget, he puts the number at nearly $276 million.<\/p>\n
He noted the alleged overspending is virtually equal to the $278 million the Florida Association of Counties estimates Jacksonville would lose by the time a $250,000 homestead exemption would kick in under the property tax phaseout plan, which is set to appear on the November ballot.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe constitutional amendment it\u2019s aggressive. But it needed to be aggressive because the spending, the excessive spending and wasteful spending by local governments has been aggressive as well,\u201d said Ingoglia.<\/p>\n
He also questioned the legitimacy of the Association\u2019s claim the city would lose nearly $387 million when factoring in the 5 percent cap<\/a> on non-homesteaded property assessments.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re going from zero to five, not from 10 to five. So, when you run those numbers it\u2019s really not a loss. It\u2019s just fuzzy math,\u201d said Ingoglia.<\/p>\n Mayor Donna Deegan\u2019s Office responded to Ingoglia\u2019s new numbers, questioning the lack of specifics.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce 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 that will hurt the vast majority of people,\u201d said a spokesperson with the mayor\u2019s office. \u201cJacksonville is already a low tax city with a lean and efficient budget that delivers the greatest return for our citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n Deegan came out last week in opposition to the property tax phaseout proposal<\/a> and argued that city services across the spectrum would suffer.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are ways we can provide relief to people without cutting out the foundation of the house,\u201d said Deegan.<\/p>\n Ingoglia claimed Deegan\u2019s administration has been responsible for all the excess spending in Jacksonville over the past six years.<\/p>\n Based on city budgets dating back to the 2019\/2020 fiscal year, Former Mayor Lenny Curry\u2019s last four budgets increased spending by 14.5 percent overall.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Mayor Deegan\u2019s past three budgets have increased spending by 37 percent over Curry\u2019s final budget.<\/p>\n \u201cIs it the government\u2019s money or is it the taxpayers\u2019 money? I\u2019m on the side of taxpayers,\u201d said Ingoglia. \u201dMayor Deegan can be on the side of big government that just taxes you to the hilt.\u201d<\/p>\n The mayor\u2019s office responded to Ingoglia, putting the blame on Mayor Deegan by pointing out that when he was here last year<\/a>, he had suggested the spending problem was \u201ca Democrat and a Republican problem\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThat flip-flop further shows this is a hyper-partisan exercise,\u201d the mayor\u2019s office said in a statement.<\/p>\n During that visit in 2025, Ingoglia did however, suggest the Deegan Administration shared the brunt of the blame.<\/p>\n \u201cLooking at the budget numbers for the City of Jacksonville, and going back to the prior administration and current years to the Deegan administration, Deegan\u2019s spending is on steroids,\u201d Ingoglia said during his 2025 visit.<\/p>\n >>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/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 Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia claimed excessive spending in Jacksonville continues to spiral during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[982,126287,126289,126286,12852,95449,115607,56464,44843,56463,28,45945,126288,969,116,118,117,971,121135,970,13663,634,1375,11103],"class_list":["post-300550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action_news","tag-angoa","tag-angolia","tag-blaise_ingoa","tag-cfo","tag-curry","tag-deagan","tag-deegan","tag-democratic","tag-donna_degan","tag-florida","tag-florida_association_of_counties","tag-golia","tag-jack","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jake","tag-jake_stanan","tag-jake_stoan","tag-lenny_curry","tag-local","tag-mayor","tag-republican"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300550","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=300550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}