Florida’s chief financial officer criticized Broward County after state Department of Government Efficiency officials reviewed the county’s budget.
The state’s DOGE team were in Broward County over the summer, reviewing all the books over two days, analyzing the county’s general funds.
On Tuesday, Blaise Ingoglia appeared at Keiser University in Pembroke Pines to discuss what, he says, is the county’s wasteful spending.
“The government bureaucracy itself is the wasteful spending, we will show you examples of specific spending when the DOGE reports come out,” he said. “Government is expanding because they can, not because they need to.”
DOGE officials said the current nearly $2 billion fund for the county has grown by $617 million over the past five years. They believe nearly $200 million from the county’s budget could be cut.
“Broward County has added an extra $190 million in excessive, wasteful spending in its general fund budget. They’re expanding way past inflation and population growth,” said Ingoglia.
Ingoglia went on to condemn local officials for allowing the budget to increase to the point of needing state intervention to control.
“I don’t get paid $400,000 a year as administrator. “It’s not my job to go in and cut the budgets, it’s not the policymakers’ jobs to go in and cut the budgets. It’s the job of the administrators and the city managers and the people to cut their budgets. We can do it at the state, I just don’t understand why they don’t do it at the local [level,]” said Ingoglia.
State officials were reluctant to give specifics of what could be cut from the county’s budget.
Broward County Mayor Beam Furr welcomed the state’s review over the summer, saying local officials would be open to any suggestions they have over the budget.
“If they can find some things that we can do better, we’ll do better. I’m looking at it as a teachable moment,” said Furr.
Earlier this month, the Broward County Commission passed a decrease to the property tax rate that would reduce the amount they receive in property taxes by about $1 million. They said they also wanted to keep up reserve funds in the case of emergencies, such as hurricanes and economic downturns.
“We’ve done well with our reserves, we have no debt, which is very rare , so that tells you this county is doing very well,” said Furr during that commission meeting.
Furr went on to say that Broward County is one of the few counties in the country that has maintained a triple-A bond rating, which is similar to having a good credit score.
“Other cities or counties may have run up their budget, we haven’t,” said Commissioner Steve Geller. “We haven’t. The county has chosen to put additional money into fighting homelessness because state law made us do that.”
Geller said the increased spending has also gone to critical emergency services.
“The majority of the increase has gone to either police and fire, public safety and or building our reserves, and both of those are the right thing to do,” said Geller.
Ingoglia says the specifics about the Broward County budget will be available when DOGE releases their full report.
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