Palm Beach County's spending under spotlight: State DOGE team finds ‘area of opportunities'

Yahoo

a day ago

On the second day of Florida DOGE's visits to Palm Beach County's offices to review spending, the state's chief financial officer said some of what's been found has been 'a little eye popping.'
The team 'identified some things, some area of opportunities here in Palm Beach County,' CFO Blaise Ingoglia told reporters outside of the county's government building on Tuesday. 'I don't think that the voters in Palm Beach County would agree that that's probably the best use of taxpayer dollars.'
Ingoglia declined to identify the specifics, saying it's too early for that. Instead, that information will be available in reports coming out about 60 days after the visits to county offices across the state are complete.
Palm Beach County is one of many municipalities being visited by Gov. Ron DeSantis' state Department of Government Efficiency teams in the past few weeks, aiming to find what state officials deem as wasteful, unnecessary spending. Ingoglia also has emphasized the goal of reducing property taxes through an amendment on the November 2026 ballot.
'We're going to try to make the state as affordable as possible, and with that needs to come a property-tax cut,' Ingoglia said Tuesday. 'So the idea of these audits are get on site, start shining a light on wasteful spending, things that local governments shouldn't be entering contracts on or doing, and we're going to arm people with the information in the counties with that information so then they can make decisions based upon whether they want to reelect local officials.'
Ingoglia also provided some more insight Tuesday of the type of employee information being reviewed: government positions, contracts, the history of raises and how many raises have gone out.
'We're trying to see how much the average person in the county makes, as compared to average local government,' he said. 'We're trying to see how much money they have socked away in reserve funds. So all of this builds up to the point where we think that local governments have room to cut.'
Ahead of their Monday and Tuesday visits, DOGE had requested that Palm Beach County officials provide information about environmental goals, transportation, homeless services, property and leases, employee compensation and nearly 20 different requests coinciding with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
In response to questions about the county sheriff's costs associated with security for President Donald Trump, Ingoglia said Palm Beach County's budgetary situation is different from the other 66 counties in the state.
'We're very thankful that we have a president from the state of Florida here, and we understand that law enforcement needs to have a heavy presence,' he said. 'The law enforcement budgets probably should be beefed up to make sure our president and dignitaries coming in and out of Palm Beach are safe.
'We're looking at everything holistically, but when you take into account that we have the President of the United States and Mar-a-Lago here in the state of Florida, I think making sure that he is protected and everyone else is protected is probably a worthwhile use of taxpayer dollars,' he said.
However, Ingoglia made it clear he deems much of municipal environmental initiatives wasteful.
'A lot of it is mandates, a lot of this you're taxing people when people are hurting, which taxpayers are, property taxpayers in the state are hurting,' he said. 'You have to prioritize things. So I would argue that Green New Deal initiatives are probably not the way to go.'
In other county business, the county welcomed some new leadership. A few hours before Ingoglia spoke outside the county's government building in West Palm Beach, the county commissioners greeted a new clerk of courts as well as a new county administrator during a commission meeting.
Abruzzo, the former county clerk, was officially appointed as the county's new administrator Tuesday morning after being voted on by county commissioners in June. Meanwhile, former state Rep. Mike Caruso also began his role as the county's new clerk of the circuit court and comptroller after being appointed by DeSantis to replace Abruzzo.
'We have an extraordinary staff, they are remarkable, their hearts and souls are in our county and I'm truly blessed to be able to help guide them and lead them during this time,' Abruzzo said during Tuesday's meeting.
As administrator, Abruzzo will manage the county's nearly $9 billion budget and execute the decisions approved by the Board of County Commissioners.
In the coming months, Abruzzo has said that the commission plans to conduct performance evaluations of all county employees, the goal of which, he said, is to see 'how can you save taxpayer dollars? Where can you streamline? Where can you cut costs?'
In July, Abruzzo said he views the DOGE reviews as an opportunity.
'It's always a good thing to evaluate what's occurring in our government structure and how we can make it better,' he said at the time.
Caruso also addressed the county on Tuesday morning, giving a 'shoutout' to DeSantis for entrusting him with the position. In his role, Caruso will oversee public records and taxpayer dollars.
'I've only been in the office for about four hours, and I can tell the family and the team that we have there is just unsurpassed,' he said during the meeting.
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