Opened your property tax bill yet? 😕
Florida's DOGE audits
In case you haven't been following Florida's Dept of Government Efficiency under Blaise Ingolia, that department is auditing the budgets of all counties and major cities over the last 5 years. Their goal is to identify waste of our ever-increasing property taxes from higher assessed values.
So far, Florida DOGE has identified $1.86 BILLON in wasteful spending, and their apples-to-apples methodology accounts for inflation and population growth.
The auditors found $278 million in waste just in Hillsborogh County! How is this happening? Well, our rising property values give counties and municipalities a windfall and they find ways to spend it ("use it or lose it"). Then add to that the fact that all the special purpose, fixed fee (non valorum) taxes -- including our CDDs -- ever rarely get questioned. It's a huge budget with little resident oversight.
What can we do? Take a moment to peek at our county's budget https://hcfl.gov/government/budget/budget-information
Follow @DOGEfla on X (fomerly Twitter) and VOTE in County elections for supervisors who are financially responsible.