![\"Florida](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/477AF29143933B0BEB6F1CFA04315BDC.jpg\")
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MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. – Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia slammed Manatee County government on Thursday, saying it\u2019s spending too much and overtaxing its citizens. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
When it comes to excessive spending, Ingoglia said Manatee County was the worst of the seven counties and cities audited so far by the DOGE committee.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Wasteful, excessive spending knows no partisan bounds,” he said.<\/p>\n
By the numbers:<\/p>\n
Ingoglia said the committee\u2019s audit of Manatee County\u2019s finances took inflation and population growth into account and found the county spent $112 million more than it reasonably should have.<\/p>\n
Ingoglia did not reveal the specific areas where overspending occurred.\u00a0 Those details will be released later.\u00a0 But he noted the county\u2019s general fund, funded by property taxes, increased by $269 million over the last five years. \u00a0That\u2019s a 69% increase \u2013 and the largest the committee has seen so far.<\/p>\n
READ: Nearly $279M in Hillsborough’s general fund flagged by Florida DOGE Task Force<\/a><\/p>\n What they’re saying:<\/p>\n Ingoglia says that money should be in the hands of taxpayers. Instead, he said the county has expanded its payroll by more than 472 new employees.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n “This means they are growing government, they are hiring librarians, clerks, and expanding government at a rate that is unprecedented in this area,” he said.<\/p>\n Ingoglia left the county and the commissioners this piece of advice: “You have to go in there and start thinking like it\u2019s not their money. It\u2019s somebody else\u2019s money. It\u2019s unfortunate they campaign one way and govern another way when they get there. They need to take care and be a better steward of your property taxes.”<\/p>\n The county responds:<\/p>\n The county responded to the criticism late Thursday afternoon by releasing a statement that said:<\/p>\n \u00a0“We were not previously aware of the details released by the Chief Financial Officer today, but we welcome the opportunity to review the findings and better understand the analysis.”<\/p>\n The statement also said it has created a citizen-led government efficiency liaison committee which will look further into the findings.<\/p>\n The Source: \u00a0Information for this story was gathered from a news conference held by Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia in Manatee County on Thursday, October 16, as well as a written statement released by the county\u2019s public information office.<\/p>\n Florida<\/a>Manatee County<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. – Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia slammed Manatee County government on Thursday, saying it\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[47,4134,115,135,137,136,628],"class_list":{"0":"post-9117","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-fl","9":"tag-manatee","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-tampa","12":"tag-tampa-headlines","13":"tag-tampa-news","14":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9117","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=9117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Manatee](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/056408D13B8CCFE131E8BC4678D7CDFD.jpg\")
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