Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia says Hillsborough County had nearly $279M in excessive spending

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia visited Brandon on Wednesday to discuss wasteful spending in Hillsborough County.

According to Ingoglia, Hillsborough County had nearly $279 million in excessive spending.

“Another astounding number. Now, I didn’t think any county was going to beat Jacksonville or Orange County, but here we are,” Ingoglia said.

The CFO said calculations accounted for inflation, population, law enforcement and firefighters’ raises.

“The taxpayers of this county should be outraged at the level of property taxes they are putting into the public coffers only for it to be wasted by bureaucrats and career politicians,” Ingoglia said.

Since 2019, Ingoglia said the Hillsborough County general fund budget has increased by $860,000, or 56.6%.

During that time, the population increased by 123,823.

“Local governments are taking your tax dollars. They are expanding local governments. Hiring people. Giving out raises to a lot of people — some of them well-deserved, some of them not so well-deserved. But they are creating bureaucratic programs and now they are trying to keep them,” Ingoglia said. “So my question for local government is, how were you able to do it in 2019? How were you able to do it in 2013? All of this money, all of a sudden, comes in, and now it’s an absolute necessity that they actually have to keep it now. I’m calling B.S., and I think a lot of taxpayers need to call B.S. on this number also.”

The CFO said the budget increase was only to accommodate the increase in population.

“How does that add up? I’m sorry that math does not math,” Ingoglia said. “To make matters worse for the taxpayers in Hillsborough County, just to help deliver services to those 123,000 people, they hired an additional 645 people in local government, expanding government beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.”

Ignoglia said that with every person moving into Hillsborough County, the government has expanded its budget by $6,944 per person.

“They’re just using population growth to increase the budgets,’ Ingoglia said.

“By our calculations, Hillsborough County could have easily reduced their millage rate by 1.02 mils. Cut taxes and not even worried about it,” Ingoglia said.

The CFO did not give specifics are where he believed the wasteful spending had occurred but said details would be released in the full report in the coming weeks.

Hillsborough County Commissioner Harry Cohen said it’s too soon to draw conclusions without details.

“I’m not exactly sure where the numbers came from and whether or not they are accurate,” said Commissioner Cohen.

Cohen pointed out that county budgets are unanimously approved and audited.

“Our budgets passed with unanimous vote of the Board of County commissioners, and they are audited and scrutinized very effectively, and we received AAA bond ratings for our financial practices from all three of the major rating agencies,” Cohen said. “If there is waste in our budget, I know that our board would be very interested in hearing about the specifics. Any commissioner can bring anything up to the board, and if four of the seven members think there is waste, that item will be removed.”