JACKSONVILLE BEACH, Fla. – Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia took aim at Jacksonville city government Monday, claiming the city wasted $275.7 million in taxpayer money in the 2025-26 budget — a sharp jump from the $199 million in excessive spending he claimed the previous year.
Ingoglia made the announcement at a news conference in Jacksonville Beach, flanked by state lawmakers and advocates from Americans for Prosperity.
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The CFO has been conducting a statewide spending accountability tour, publicly calling out both Republican- and Democrat-led governments for what he describes as wasteful and excessive spending.
Ingoglia said his office uses a formula it calls the FAFO methodology — base budget plus inflation plus population growth — to determine what a government’s budget should reasonably be, then compares that figure to actual spending.
For Jacksonville, the formula applied 25.5% cumulative inflation and 10.49% population growth from the 2019-20 budget year through the current 2025-26 budget. Ingoglia said his office also added a 5% buffer — roughly $69 million — for governments with budgets exceeding $2 billion.
“Not only did we index for inflation and population in Jacksonville’s budget, we actually added a $69 million buffer on top of it,” Ingoglia said. “We didn’t have to do that.”
Even with those adjustments, Ingoglia said Jacksonville’s budget grew 61% beyond what his formula allows — producing the $275.7 million excessive spending figure for 2025-26 alone.
Looking back across six budget years, Ingoglia said the cumulative total of excessive spending in Jacksonville reaches $623 million — and that virtually all of it occurred in the last three years.
“All of the excessive and wasteful spending that has happened in the city of Jacksonville has happened over the last three years,” Ingoglia said, making a reference to Mayor Donna Deegan’s administration. “I don’t think that is a coincidence.”
The Mayor’s Office sent News4JAX the following statement in response to Ingoglia’s claims:
Once again, the state CFO has swooped into town without any specifics and more numbers pulled out of thin air. It’s another hyper-partisan exercise designed to bully cities and lay the groundwork for passage of a property tax cost shift that will hurt the vast majority of people.
Jacksonville is already a low tax city with a lean and efficient budget that delivers the greatest return for our citizens. People want parks, libraries, pools, roads, and lower housing and healthcare costs. That’s not waste. That’s providing a good quality of life for a world class city. And that’s what we’ve been focused on since day one.”
The Mayor’s Office also pointed out that while the CFO claimed the wasteful spending was only in the last three years during Monday’s news conference, he said otherwise in a September 2025 press conference in Jacksonville.
“The spending is not just a Democrat problem. This is a Democrat and a Republican problem,” Ingoglia said back then.
Statewide numbers
Jacksonville is not alone on Ingoglia’s list. His office has now reviewed more than a dozen jurisdictions across Florida, exposing what he says is more than $2.5 billion in total excessive spending statewide. Among the figures he cited:
- Palm Beach County: $344 million
- Miami-Dade County: $302 million
- Orange County: $300 million
- Hillsborough County: $278 million
- Broward County: $189 million
- City of Miami: $94 million
- Manatee County: $112 million
- Alachua County: $84 million
- Flagler County: $59 million
- Nassau County: $53 million
- Seminole County: $48 million
- St. Petersburg: $49 million
- St. Lucie County: $46 million
- Citrus County: $39 million
- City of Fort Pierce: $10 million
- City of Orlando: $22 million
Ingoglia noted that the City of Orlando, while still showing $22 million in waste, is a “pretty good steward of tax dollars” relative to other jurisdictions.
November ballot amendment
Ingoglia used the announcement to amplify support for a constitutional amendment on Florida’s November ballot that would increase the homestead exemption to $250,000. The Florida Association of Counties and the League of Cities have estimated the amendment would cost Jacksonville approximately $277 million in revenue.
Ingoglia said that number is not a coincidence.
“We just found $275 million in excessive and wasteful spending,” he said. “If they are saying that they cannot cut out $277 [million], it’s just scare tactics.”
He compared the current political climate to the 2006-09 period, when rising property values and a taxpayer revolt led to an expanded homestead exemption — from $25,000 to $50,000. Local governments predicted layoffs and closures then, he said, and none of it materialized.
“Not only did government’s revenue get reduced at that point also because of the additional homestead exemption, for the first time in the history of the United States, we saw property values decline sharply,” Ingoglia said. “Did any government go bankrupt? Did anything that they’ve ever said come true? No.”