After months of surveying city budgets, Florida’s Department of Government Efficiency presented a 98-page report to the legislature on Wednesday that provided examples — but not a full accounting — of alleged wasteful spending within select local municipalities. 

The document comes two weeks after its initial Jan. 13 deadline with sweeping allegations of bureaucratic bloat related to budgetary matters from essential city services to grants for the arts.  

In the months leading up to the report’s release, the head of Florida DOGE and the Chief Financial Officer, Blaise Ingoglia, toured the state with the aim of identifying “waste, fraud and abuse” in local government spending. In press conferences, he said his office found wasteful spending ranging from $53 million in Nassau County to as much as $344 million in Palm Beach County.

And on Sept. 17, one week prior to the Jacksonville City Council voting on this year’s budget, Ingoglia descended on Jacksonville to admonish the city and Democratic Mayor Donna Deegan.

“The City of Jacksonville is overtaxing and overspending your money to the tune of almost $200 million,” Ingoglia said.

Ingoglia told the audience that Florida DOGE conducted an audit of the city’s finances over the course of five years. 

In the report, a list of budget lines totaling about $95 million dollars provided examples of what Florida DOGE considered excessive spending. The document does not provide exact calculations as to how Ingoglia determined the $200 million number. 

With state and national policies encroaching upon local level politics, the arrival of Florida DOGE in Jacksonville had a direct impact on budget proceedings the following week.

Named after one of President Donald Trump’s signature initiatives, the state DOGE effort and Jacksonville’s own city council-driven initiative illustrate the impact of national politics on the local level. 

As a politically purple city, Jacksonville has a history of Republican and Democratic politicians engaging in bipartisan problem solving. Mayor and city council seats have flipped regularly between both parties. Disputes across party lines are commonplace. 

But in this new era of Trump policies, local politicians are taking cues from national issues.

In the early hours of Sept. 24, nearing the 14-hour debate mark, the council was still divided over a portion of Mayor Donna Deegan’s $2.2 billion budget, the largest in Jacksonville history. 

Councilmember Rory Diamond’s ‘Big Beautiful Budget’ amendments, which proposed prohibiting funds spent on DEI, abortion care and immigration, were one of the most contentious parts of the budget.

The amendments were a clear homage to Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill,’ indicative of where he stands on the political spectrum. 

Both Republican and Democratic council members were averse to adding this type of legislation, leaving the budget in a stalemate.

“This is serious business. This is not the time to make a political statement. It’s time to balance the budget that has to do with dollars and cents. And not try to make a stand on cultural war stuff. This is a budget, folks,” said Republican Councilman Matt Carlucci during the budget meeting.

Diamond’s amendments are not the only examples of local politics with state and national-level influences.

He is one of five council members who currently sit on the Duval DOGE Special Committee, taking inspiration from the federal effort in Washington.

The ‘trickle down effect’ of DOGE

By January of last year, Elon Musk led the charge to slash $1 trillion in what Trump deemed as unnecessary spending and eliminate sprawling federal bureaucracy. DOGE did not come close to hitting that figure, disbanded months before its year-long charter and left thousands of federal workers jobless.

Although it created disruption within the federal government, Florida is among 26 states across the country that have created their own DOGE-style initiatives to cut excessive spending from the government.

Governor Ron DeSantis followed suit, creating Florida DOGE through an executive order in February 2025. 

When Ingoglia arrived in Jacksonville, Deegan said she attempted to pin down where inefficiencies may lie within the city’s finances and assist with the auditing process.

“The CFO never would agree to meet with me. I asked to meet several times. His folks said he didn’t have time, but he had time for everybody else on his side of the aisle except for me,” Deegan said.

Ingoglia recalled Deegan contacting his team but explained that there was not much to discuss with her or any other Democratic mayors across Florida.

“ So I think she reached out to our office…I was probably busy traveling the state protecting taxpayers at the time. There’s no conversation that I’m going to be able to have with Mayor Deegan or Mayor Demings or Mayor Cava that is going to convince them that they are overtaxing and overspending locally,” said Ingoglia in response to a question from The Tributary  at a press conference in Winter Park.

Where are these numbers coming from?

In each county Ingoglia visits, he argues that most of the excessive spending is related to the hiring of new city employees.

“When we talk about the excessive, wasteful spending, we’re talking about the growth of government itself, right? Don’t fall into the trap of what the local politicians are going to say and say, ‘Hey, give me a specific line item that you don’t like.’ Because that’s a shell game. That is smoke and mirrors. A lot of the waste is adding full-time employees and growing the government itself,” Ingoglia said.

Ingoglia believes that the costs associated with each unnecessary employee, such as pensions, salaries and benefits, are inflating the budget. He suggests that slashing city jobs and property taxes — a priority for DeSantis to shrink government — will alleviate overspending.

According to the city’s budget documents, a majority of the newest government jobs in Jacksonville are the ones Republican and Democratic leaders say they are fighting to keep. 

Of the roughly 600 additional city employees hired since 2019, over 500 of them work in public safety.

In years past, police and fire experienced financial strain whenever there was a property tax cut because that is what funds these city services. 

And during last year’s budget cycle, the Republican-backed millage rate reduction faced criticism from longstanding civic leaders, constituents and members of the police and fire departments.

In Jacksonville, Florida DOGE listed $61.5 million in road projects and $500,000 in city employee overtime among the examples of excessive spending in the report.

Backed by both Democrats and Republicans, this year’s budget made a $100 million-dollar increase in pensions and salaries available for first responders.

Yet, the Florida DOGE report lists $30 million of police and fire pensions as wasteful spending, due to the company managing those funds having a DEI policy on its website.

Florida DOGE made recommendations to the legislature to require public employees to take an oath to not discriminate “to undo the damage caused by DEI.”

The report also proposed Ingoglia have “enhanced power” so local governments are compelled to comply with audits and incur penalties if they do not.

The Tributary has made public records requests to Florida DOGE and the Governor’s Office for a list of expenses that led to the $200 million-dollar figure. Those agencies have not provided the documents.

The aftermath of the budget meeting

The city council ultimately passed a record-high budget. Instead of slashing the budget like Florida DOGE wanted, it increased by $147 million from the previous year. But nearly 70 percent of that figure is driven by a salary and pension raise for first responders. 

Trying to cut funding in Jacksonville as dramatically as Ingoglia wants to is unachievable without cutting back on public safety workers, too. To date, both Democrats and Republicans are unwilling to go that far.

As the hours droned by into the early morning, council members voted to remove ‘Big Beautiful Budget’ amendments from the budget.

Despite opposition from across the political spectrum, the city council still passed a small property tax cut, saving homeowners about $20 a year.

DOGE on a local level

The five council members of Duval DOGE are continuing to identify portions of the budget where money can be saved. The committee has a more conservative goal of cutting $50 million in excessive spending compared to Ingoglia’s $200 million. 

An investigation into the city’s telehealth program and reconfiguring the employee health care plan are among the priorities for Duval DOGE. 

But to Deegan, their efforts are not saving the city money, only creating more confusion. 

“We should stick to our infrastructure and roads and bridges and all the things that a local government can have a great impact on,” Deegan said.

She believes people like Diamond and Ingoglia are bringing up federal issues locally just to get the attention of their counterparts in Washington.

“A lot of these folks have aspirations for federal or state office, and I think their belief is that this is what they have to do to advance. And that’s too bad,” Deegan said.

Trinity Webster-Bass is The Tributary’s inaugural Investigative Journalism Fellow. You can reach her at trinity.webster-bass@floridatrib.org.