Orange County Has Indulged In Nearly $200 Million Of ‘Wasteful Spending,' Florida CFO Asserts

By Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix

September 16, 2025

Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia today said that, based on calculations by his DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) auditors, the Orange County government over the past five years has OK’d more than $190 million in “excessive and wasteful spending.”

Speaking in Orlando, Ingoglia said the general fund budget for Orange County had increased by more than $559 million — a nearly 54% boost — in that time, as he continues to make the case along with Gov. Ron DeSantis that local government spending is out of control and is the reason why Floridians deserve property tax relief.

“Your local government here is taking the money and spending it and expanding government, creating new programs that probably shouldn’t be paid with your tax dollars, expanding already existing programs that are paid by your tax dollars, and just wasting it willy-nilly,” he said.

Orange County’s current budget sits at $8.2 billion.

County Mayor Jerry Demings fired back, complaining Ingoglia got basic facts wrong and neglected to consider the costs of accommodating the area’s huge tourism numbers, and that the CFO didn’t account for higher law enforcement salaries in Orange County.

“What I’m saying here is that the CFO ought to get his own house in order first, before he starts looking at someone else’s house,” Demings said.

Since DeSantis appointed him as CFO in July, Ingoglia has spearheaded a team of state auditors who have visited more than a dozen city and county governments to look for what they claim is waste, fraud, and abuse.

This DOGE tour comes as both men are on a full-fledged campaign to give Floridians a chance to vote to substantially reduce or eliminate taxes for homesteaded properties in a 2026 ballot measure. (Ingoglia would also be a likely candidate for CFO on that same statewide ballot).

Ingoglia and DeSantis are attempting to preempt criticism by local government officials that reducing property taxes would severely harm basic government services that they pay for, such as police, fire, parks and recreation, libraries, and public health.

Local government officials in other parts of the state have defended their increased budgets in recent years, citing inflation and rising population.

Ingoglia disparaged part of that argument on Monday, saying that Orange County’s population has only increased by 79,000 people in the past five years. And he said that in those same five years the county had hired 661 new employees.

The CFO said his DOGE team found $190 million in excessive spending during the audit period. He said auditors looked back to Orange County’s 2019-2020 fiscal year budget and increased it every year to account for inflation and population growth. They added two additional “buffers” of 5% and 10% to accommodate for the fact that the government doesn’t run as efficiently as the private sector.

“When you factor in all of that, Orange County’s budget should be almost $200 million less than it is right now,” he said, adding that that broke down to about $148 per taxpayer.

He said the county could “easily” reduce the tax rate in Orange County by 0.86 mills and offer “real property tax relief.”

The CFO didn’t list any particular programs that would qualify under his definition of wasteful spending. DOGE auditors made requests to Orange County officials for information related to interactions and assistance to programs that serve Black, Caribbean, and LGBTQ communities, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

And when DOGE auditors went to St. Petersburg last month, they posed numerous inquiries about DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), resiliency, and climate change and specific purchases of electric vehicles.

Part of the promise by Ingoglia and DeSantis is the complete elimination of property taxes on homesteaded properties.

However, that likely constitutional amendment would not constitute a full revocation of property taxes, according to a key state legislator.

“We don’t see that as fiscally responsible,” state Rep. Toby Overdorf (R-Stuart) told WFLX television last week. Overdorf is co-chair of the select committee created by House Speaker Daniel Perez to study property tax relief.

Every piece of information was “quadruple-checked and verified” by the Florida Department of Revenue, Ingoglia said. “All they’re trying to do is keep the gravy train of your dollars flowing into their coffers so they can continue expanding government. Don’t buy it.”

During an Orlando press conference last month, Ingoglia accused Orange County officials of failing to cooperate with requests, that some employees provided incomplete, scripted answers in interviews and may have withheld or edited documents. Ingoglia said he planned to issue subpoenas to Orange County employees and may bring in digital forensic investigators.

Demings responded that all his employees had “fully cooperated” with Florida DOGE.

Ingoglia said on Monday that the issue of overspending in Orange County was so big that he predicted that “a lot” of local officials would be voted out of office, and then took a dig at Mayor Demings’ ambitions.

“You have a mayor now who’s deciding that he wants to run for governor,” he said. “This type of spending should be disqualifying.”

Late on Monday afternoon, Demings, a Democrat, responded to Ingoglia’s comments in a press conference, sounding very much like a potential 2026 gubernatorial candidate. He said the CFO had made allegations “that factually just were not true” and that he had used some “fuzzy math” in making his calculations.

Regarding the basic numbers, Demings said the county’s population had increased by 125,488, not 79,000, citing the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research as his source. He said general revenue had increased by $474 million over the past five years, not $559 million as Ingoglia had alleged.

Much of that had to do with inflation, Demings insisted, raising the costs for a myriad of items, including what the state charges counties for public pensions and benefits. And he stressed that Orlando is the No. 1 tourist destination in North America, with more than 75 million tourists and an economic impact of more than $94 billion last year, according to Visit Orlando.

“That means that in addition to permanent residents, we must provide services for an additional 206,000 people every day within our community,” he said. “There is no other local government in Florida with that type of impact on services.”

Demings acknowledged that the county had hired 661 individuals over the past five years, but said that more than half of them (333) were public safety officials, and said that unlike the state, the county was paying them a competitive wage.

“As a former law enforcement officer, a former sheriff, a former chief of police, a former public safety director, what I can tell you is this: it is well known amongst those of us who truly have served in those capacities, that the corrections and prison guards don’t make what they should make in the state of Florida,” he said. “It is well known that the troopers are some of the lowest-paid law enforcement officers in the state of Florida.”

Demings attacked state Republicans for failing to address the problems of high property insurance and health costs, plus the lack of affordable housing in Florida.

He said that if the state sincerely cared about the county’s budget, “they would sit down and talk to us like decent folk would do, rather than issue subpoenas. They could have simply had a conversation with us. No, they wanted to be heavy-handed. They wanted to perform before the cameras. That’s what the residents of Florida are sick and tired of. They want people in office who are going to take care of the people of this state.”

Demings was asked by a reporter after his 14-minute press conference whether his response meant that he had officially announced that he was running for governor.

“If I had announced that I was officially running for governor, I would have had a big announcement. That hadn’t happened yet, okay?” he said. “I’m not saying that I’m not going to run. Given these things that’ve been happening, I just might do that.”

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