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Tag: FAFO

  • Nikki Fried slams CFO’s proposal to allow removal of locally elected officials

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    Credit: Blaise Ingoglia @GovGoneWild/X

    Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried is blasting proposed legislation introduced this week by Florida Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Blaise Ingoglia aimed at increasing local government spending transparency — specifically, a provision that would allow removal of local officials found to have committed “financial abuse.”

    The legislation, scheduled to be filed ahead of the coming legislative session in the Florida House by Rep. Monique Miller, R-Palm Bay, and in the Senate by Nick DiCeglie, R-Indian Rocks Beach, would increase local government transparency and formally establish Ingoglia’s Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight (FAFO) effort into statute.

    The proposal includes a provision that would codify the state’s CFO’s ability to recommend removal of any elected official who is found to have committed “financial abuse, malfeasance or misfeasance.”

    “I have heard zero from our new CFO about what he plans on doing to hold our property insurance companies accountable,” Fried said on a Zoom conference call on Thursday. “Instead, he’s bullying our local governments, creating fictitious formulas, and now he wants to overreach even more by putting a clause in there about removing elected local officials.”

    More than any recent governor, Ron DeSantis has aggressively exercised the power within his office to remove elected officials from office, including school board members, sheriffs, and most controversially, two Democratic state prosecutors, Andrew Warren in Hillsborough County and Monique Worrell in Orange and Osceola counties.

    Worrell rebounded from her 2023 suspension, winning re-election by a large margin in 2024.

    “We see how Ron DeSantis has abused that power throughout his eight years in this administration, and so that is just them bullying our local governments that are the ones who are closest to the people,” Fried added.

    In addition to those above listed suspensions, Attorney General James Uthmeier threatened other local governments officials in Florida earlier this year in Orange County and Key West when they raised objections to signing 287(g) agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    In the case of Orange County, Mayor Jerry Demings said in August that he signed an updated agreement with ICE under “protest and extreme duress” after Uthmeier threatened the mayor and all six county commissioners that their failure to do so would result in their removal from office by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

    Other provisions in the legislation introduced by Ingoglia at a press conference in Tampa on Wednesday include allowing the Department of Financial Services to pursue financial penalties from local governments if they don’t respond to inquiries “promptly,” including by withholding any state funds until they do so.

    “If we ask for the information on a Monday, and we’re giving you five days to compile the information — get it in five days; if you don’t, then you face a $1,000 a day penalty,” he said at the press conference.

    The legislation comes as Ingoglia continues to make the case that local governments have been engaged in “excessive and wasteful spending” by comparing their fiscal year 2024-2025 budgets with what they were spending in 2019-2020. So far, after reviewing the budgets of 11 local governments this year, he says they have engaged collectively in $1.86 billion in alleged wasteful and excessive spending.

    Local government officials who have received those FAFO audits have questioned the accuracy of the methodology used by the CFO’s auditors. Ingoglia has called such criticisms “bogus” and “not well thought out.”

    Fried argued that if Ingoglia were serious about cutting excessive government spending, he should look inside the DeSantis administration’s own spending excesses. She referred to a Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald story published last week reporting that the DeSantis administration spent $36.2 million in taxpayer funds last year to purchase ads against the proposed marijuana and abortion ballot measures, both of which were contested by the governor.

    “If [Ingoglia] wants to talk about saving dollars and making sure that the people are getting a return to the taxes they have put into this state, he should be focused on what’s happening in Tallahassee,” she said. “Ron DeSantis stole $38 million from the people of this state, and so that’s really where the attacks should be. That’s where his energy should be.”

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    Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix
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  • CFO Ingoglia unveils legislation to make local officials more accountable

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    Credit: Ron DeSantis/X

    Florida Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Blaise Ingoglia previewed legislation Wednesday meant to increase spending accountability and transparency for local government officials, with penalties for noncompliance including fines and removal from office.

    Ingoglia has been crisscrossing the state for months with his FAFO (Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight) team, auditing spending by some of the state’s largest counties and municipalities. To date they have reviewed spending by 11 local governments and say that they have found more than $1.86 billion in alleged wasteful and excessive spending.

    Ingoglia has been clear that part of the effort is to show taxpayers that extensive wasteful spending is taking place. His assertion of such excesses, he believes, should quell arguments by local government officials that a proposed reduction in property taxes for homestead properties will harm essential local services.

    Gov. Ron DeSantis has said he wants to put a measure on the statewide ballot next November that would eliminate of substantially reduce property taxes on homestead properties but has yet to release his own proposal(s). He has, however, ridiculed the proposals on the issue already moving their way through the Florida House as “milquetoast.”

    Ingoglia introduced his proposal during a press conference in Tampa that featured state Rep. Monique Miller, R-Palm Bay, who said she will sponsor them in the Florida House during the 2026 session.

    “Over the last five years, we have seen property taxes increase by nearly 50%, and this at a time when Florida’s families are being asked to tighten their belts,” she said. “To be direct, tax dollars have become a drug for local governments. And, like any addiction, as long as the supply is unlimited, the behavior will not change.”

    The provisions in the legislation

    The proposals discussed on Wednesday that will be sponsored by Miller in the House and Sen. Nick DiCeglie, R-Indian Rocks Beach, would include:

    • Codifying FAFO into statute to increase accountability and transparency in local government and make this effort a long-term permanent initiative. “Protecting taxpayers should not have an expiration date, and neither should FAFO,” Ingoglia declared.
    • Grant government employees, contractors, subcontractors, and taxpayers whistleblower protections when reporting waste, fraud, and abuse of local tax dollars.
    • Allow the Department of Financial Services to pursue financial penalties from local governments if they do not respond to inquiries in a “timely manner,” including the withholding of state funds until they comply. That office would have the power to issue subpoenas (as Ingoglia’s office did this summer with officials in Orange County).
    • Require local governments to upload all of their contracts into a centralized state financial system.
    • Require local governments to submit annual financial efficiency reports to include information such as cash on hand and how much goes to investment accounts and nonprofit organizations, and to list salaries of every local government employee.
    • Codify that the Florida CFO can recommend to the governor and state Cabinet removal of any elected official found to have committed financial abuse, malfeasance, or misfeasance.

    Miller said that whenever the conversation about cutting back on excessive government spending takes place, she has been “immediately bombarded by naysayers and their supporters with arguments as to why it is impossible. It’s just astounding.”

    Ingoglia spent considerable time during the news conference ridiculing local government officials “and their leftist big-budget apologists” who have questioned the methodology of his team’s audits.

    ‘Fictitious’ claims?

    Last week in Palm Beach County, Ingoglia claimed his team of auditors identified $344 million in “excessive, wasteful spending” in the most recent fiscal year — the highest amount across the 11 local governments his agency has reviewed this year.

    That received strong pushback from Palm Beach County Administrator Joe Abruzzo, who called the claims “fictitious,” and sent Ingoglia a public records request asking for detailed information about how the calculations were made, according to Stet News.

    Local government officials have repeatedly questioned what the CFO is identifying as being “wasteful” and “excessive” in their spending practices. Ingoglia has promised those governments that detailed audits identifying that spending are coming, but they have yet to be released.

    “Will there be specific instances outlining line items in the budget that they are spending? Yes, but that is why this information and this piece of legislation is vital, because it allows us to get more information quicker than we would have before,” he said.

    Among the local governments Ingolia’s team has audited to date, Tampa, the state’s third largest municipality, hasn’t been one of them. But Ingoglia said if he is elected next year and then re-elected in 2030, he’ll eventually get to every local government that draws taxpayer funds.

    “Whether it is a city, a county, a taxing jurisdiction, a school board, a board that has its own millage rate, its own taxing authority, that will not escape my grasp over the next nine years,” he said. “I’m going to be looking at everything.”

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    Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix
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