Even before a state DOGE review of Palm Beach County spending was finished, Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia was in front of TV lights in Jacksonville, criticizing the county’s low-cost bus rides for the disabled among “ridiculous examples” of budgetary indulgence.
Last week, he was back under the lights, upping the ante. Ingoglia claimed that DOGE (or FAFO, for Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight, as he calls it) found Palm Beach County squandered $344 million in taxpayer money.
Ingoglia provided no proof. He offered no details. There were charts but no report. The CFO, supposedly a numbers guy, declared Palm Beach County guilty based on nothing that the public could see or read.
By now, no one should take Ingoglia’s financial denouncements on faith. No one should trust DOGE’s financial reviews of cities and counties, either: Their numbers aren’t adding up.
A trail of flawed math
Any serious audit, especially involving a county as large as Palm Beach (1.6 million people, larger than 11 states), is going to find examples of dubious spending.
But Ingoglia and DOGE have left a trail of flawed math in their wake. Gainesville was accused of growing its budget by nearly $90 million a year. It didn’t. Seminole County was accused of frittering away $48 million. “Give us one example” of waste, said County Commissioner Lee Constantine. “Just one.” Ingoglia retreated.
He accused Broward County of squandering $189 million. County Commissioner Steve Geller insists the numbers are “fictitious. Made up. Phony. False.” The county administrator said budget numbers DOGE cited appeared to be $100 million off.
A Pensacola welcome sign Ingoglia railed against wasn’t even a local expense. The state paid for most of it. Federal money paid the rest.
Now, Palm Beach County is getting the Ingoglia treatment: A brash press conference with zero backup and a quick exit, leaving behind the nearly impossible task of proving a negative — that the county was not wasting money.
Apples and oranges
Once again, there are problems with DOGE’s numbers. DOGE seems to have used consumer inflation measures such as rising prices for clothes and household goods in its calculations, according to Palm Beach County Administrator Joe Abruzzo.
But governments don’t work like that. Their rising costs are tied to inflation involving such items as road concrete, ambulance purchases, government technology and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Department budget, which now tops $1 billion.
Abruzzo asked Ingoglia for clarification. After all, it’s hard to fix a problem if the county doesn’t understand the math behind it.
That may take a while. Broward’s audit wound up Oct. 1, and “We haven’t heard much back from them,” Commissioner Beam Furr said last month.
This is not surprising. Prudent local finance is the embarrassingly transparent cover for Ingoglia’s real mission: Laying the groundwork for DeSantis’ campaign to eliminate property taxes by telling voters loudly and often that their tax money is being squandered. These state politicians know there’s no evidence for their claims. They’re just arrogant and elitist enough to think the public is too stupid to realize it.
Killing off property taxes is the governor’s last lame-duck hurrah before leaving office about a year from now, with Ingoglia serving as his advance man and spinmeister.
Tallahassee ineptitude
The CFO would have better served taxpayers by staying home and counting the state’s own buses, not criticizing those in Palm Beach.
The Orlando Sentinel reports that the state Department of Management Services has no online record of buses, vans and trucks used by Hope Florida, a charity tied to First Lady Casey DeSantis with finances so twisted that it spawned a grand jury investigation.
It’s not just Hope Florida. In March, lawmakers learned that the state could not account for 2,300 vehicles valued at $57 million, almost $10 million more than Ingoglia accused Seminole County of wasting (the state recently said it located the vehicles).
Every municipality in Florida is required to submit detailed, audited financial reports with Tallahassee every year. Certainly, Florida’s chief financial officer would know that. Ingoglia would know that he could simply have had DOGE go through years of those reports with a fine-toothed comb; among them, Palm Beach County’s 356-page 2024 financials.
Any lavish misspending could have been found right there, just as efficiently as Ingoglia’s charts — and with a lot more credibility.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
