Florida homeowners have been paying more in property taxes every single year while local politicians claimed they had no choice.
Now someone finally checked their math.
Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia just announced that reviews of 16 local governments found over $2.1 billion in excessive and wasteful spending – in a single year.
Local Governments Have Been Lying to Your Face
That's not a cumulative total.
That's one year.
Ingoglia has spent months crisscrossing Florida with his FAFO team – the Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight – sitting local officials down in their own counties and reading their budgets back to them.
Palm Beach County topped the list at $344 million in waste.
Miami-Dade came in at $302 million.
Hillsborough hit $278 million.
St. Lucie County – where Ingoglia held Thursday's press conference – showed a general fund that exploded 76% over six years while the county's actual population grew at a fraction of that rate.
"That is not a cumulative total over five or six years," Ingoglia said. "That is just last year."
And he's not done.
By the time his office finishes the statewide review, Ingoglia says the total will hit $10 billion in excessive spending.
This Is Exactly What DeSantis Has Been Waiting For
Every time Governor DeSantis pushes to eliminate property taxes on homesteaded properties – which would make Florida the only state in the country with no income tax and no property tax on primary residences – local officials play the same card.
Fire stations will close.
The police will disappear.
Ingoglia just pulled that card off the table.
"We believe that $2.1 billion could have easily been cut without any cuts to services," he said. "They're going to say they have to cut fire and police. That is absolutely not true."
The Florida House already proved it's serious – passing a constitutional amendment along straight party lines, 80-30, to eliminate non-school property taxes on homesteaded properties.
The Senate didn't act during the regular session.
Now DeSantis and Senate leadership are pushing it through the April special session – and Ingoglia's $2.1 billion figure lands at exactly the moment they need it.
Every county commissioner who shows up to a microphone claiming they can't absorb cuts now has to explain why their budget grew 50%, 70%, or in Flagler County's case – 119% – while their population barely moved.
They Treated Your Paycheck Like a Blank Check
Ingoglia's methodology is simple: take the 2019-2020 pre-pandemic budget, adjust it forward for inflation and population growth, and compare that number to what local governments actually spent.
Everything above that line is waste.
Miami-Dade's numbers are the clearest example of the rot.
Their general fund grew by over $843 million since 2019 – a 50% increase.
https://twitter.com/RonDeSantis/status/2038003141472305439?s=20
For every new resident who moved to Miami-Dade, the local government budget went up by $12,884 – or $51,535 for a family of four.
That money came from your property tax bill.
Ingoglia is also pushing to make this accountability effort permanent – putting FAFO into state statute, adding whistleblower protections for government employees who report waste, and giving his office subpoena power to force local governments to produce financial records.
"Protecting taxpayers should not have an expiration date," Ingoglia said.
He's right – and Florida homeowners who have watched their bills climb year after year finally have a CFO who is treating their money like it belongs to them.
Because it does.
Sources:
- Kennedy Owens, "2.1B in local overspending identified as Ingoglia pushes property tax cuts," Florida Politics, April 2, 2026.
- Florida CFO Office, "Governor Ron DeSantis and CFO Blaise Ingoglia Highlight Excessive Local Government Spending," Executive Office of the Governor, October 1, 2025.
- Florida CFO Office, "CFO Ingoglia Announces Over $302 Million in Miami-Dade County Budget as Excessive, Wasteful Spending," Florida Department of Financial Services, October 30, 2025.
- Florida CFO Office, "CFO Ingoglia Announces Over $59 Million in Flagler County Budget as Excessive, Wasteful Spending," Florida Department of Financial Services, March 26, 2026.
- Ron DeSantis, quoted in "DeSantis details phased approach to eliminate Florida property taxes," Fox Business, December 5, 2025.
- "Florida House passes property tax reform amendment," WCTV Florida Capital Bureau, February 19, 2026.
