JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The State DOGE team is about halfway through its audit of the City of Jacksonville’s finances and only Action News Jax is hearing from Florida’s Chief Financial Officer on how that audit is progressing.
“We see a lot of room for improvement,” said Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia.
Specifically, Ingoglia said he believes the $13 million property tax cut proposed by the city council is a step in the right direction, but given it amounts to only about $1 per month in savings for the average homeowner, it doesn’t go far enough.
“Because I think there’s enough fat in their budget,” said Ingoglia. ”Once you start going over these numbers and see what they’re actually spending on, you’re going to start asking yourself, ‘is this a good use of taxpayer dollars?’ And the answer to that, a lot of the times, is no.”
RELATED: Mayor and City Council Republicans disagree on proposed $13 million property tax cut
We asked whether any particular local spending items have stood out, but Ingoglia is keeping those specifics close to his chest for now.
“And the reason being is that we don’t want to tip other cities or counties off that we are looking for that stuff,” said Ingoglia.
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Action News Jax asked Mayor Donna Deegan how the city’s interactions with the state DOGE team have gone during the audit, but according to her, there haven’t been any developments following the initial visit.
“As far as I can tell, they’re still going through everything, but we haven’t heard any updates,” said Deegan on Tuesday.
And Ingoglia suggested that could be a good indication the city is cooperating.
“And in some cases, we have what happened in Orange County, where we actually had to issue subpoenas because we feel that they are not giving us information on purpose and trying to hide some of the information from the taxpayers,” said Ingoglia.
We can expect the full report detailing all the alleged wasteful spending in about a month.
Though, it likely will not be out before city council takes a final vote on the city budget in late September.
RELATED: Mayor Donna Deegan to host town halls on embattled city budget
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