![\"Florida](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AC8F7EDD9D658E9739135F58F6EF35FE.jpg\")
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ORLANDO, Fla. – Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia announced that his office has uncovered roughly $1.5 billion in what he calls “wasteful spending” across ten municipalities audited so far.<\/p>\n
According to Ingoglia, Orlando ranked among the best-performing cities, with only 4% of its budget \u2014 about $22 million \u2014 identified as potential waste, compared to $190 million in Orange County.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What we know:<\/p>\n
Ingoglia\u2019s audits are part of a broader initiative by the Florida Department of Financial Services to increase transparency and identify what the CFO calls excessive local government spending.<\/p>\n
The announcement in Orlando followed similar visits to other Florida cities as part of a public campaign to push for budget reductions and potential property tax relief.<\/p>\n
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX LOCAL APP<\/a><\/p>\n His office defines waste by comparing 2019 budgets, adjusted for current inflation and population growth, to current spending levels; any excess beyond that figure is labeled as wasteful.<\/p>\n What we don’t know:<\/p>\n The CFO\u2019s audit data has not been publicly released in detail, leaving questions about how each spending category was classified as waste and how consistent the methodology is across cities. It\u2019s also unclear how local governments might respond to the findings or whether they will adopt Ingoglia\u2019s suggested budget cuts.\u00a0<\/p>\n What they’re saying:<\/p>\n The CFO\u2019s findings have sparked debate over how government spending should be measured and what qualifies as waste.\u00a0<\/p>\n “This is still wasteful and excessive spending,” Ingoglia said during the Orlando news conference. “This is still money that could be very easily, according to our calculations, be cut out of the budget and offer property tax relief. But this is the lowest amount that we have seen so far.”<\/p>\n Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia held a news conference in Orlando, where he praised Orlando for how it’s government is spending money. He did question $22.3 million in spending and said there were areas still to cut finding. He compared $22M compared to Jackson, Orange County, and Miami-Dade governments. He then challenged those government leaders to look at their budgets. alleged wasteful spending in Orange County and Orlando. According to his numbers, Ingoglia questioned $22 million ins pending by Orlando and<\/p>\n Democratic State Rep. Anna Eskamani, who attended the event, pushed back on Ingoglia\u2019s methods, saying the CFO\u2019s formula oversimplifies complex budgeting realities.\u00a0<\/p>\n “I think you have to look at this from a scalpel, not a sledgehammer,” she told FOX 35. “And the demonization of local governments \u2014 it\u2019s just not constructive.”<\/p>\n SIGN-UP FOR FOX 35’S BREAKING NEWS, DAILY NEWS NEWSLETTERS<\/a><\/p>\n Ingoglia also emphasized plans to expand the initiative: “We are looking at reorganizing our offices to hire more auditors, to hire more local government experts, to hire more CPAs so we can get in the weeds of some of these numbers and show some of those dodge-like calculations in the future.”<\/p>\n What’s next:<\/p>\n \u00a0The CFO\u2019s office plans to expand auditing staff and continue evaluations across more cities in the coming months.<\/p>\n The Source: This story was written based on information shared by Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, and Democratic State Rep. Anna Eskamani.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Orange County News<\/a>Orlando News<\/a>Politics<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. – Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia announced that his office has uncovered roughly $1.5 billion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[47,28,30,29,115,1335,139,99,628],"class_list":{"0":"post-38242","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-fl","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-florida-headlines","11":"tag-florida-news","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-orange-county","14":"tag-orlando","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38242","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=38242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Florida](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/F8EF07C3C9B78E3EFF4735FC71C636F8.jpg\")
Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia praises Orlando spending | Full speech<\/a> <\/p>\n