Florida DOGE and Property Tax reform

12/06/2025 04:50 PM - Comment(s) - By Medley Members

Opened your property tax bill yet? 😕
Update: Support "Save Our Homes from Excessive Property Taxes" amendment in November.

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.

Florida's 2026 Property Tax Reform Initiative

Did you know that there is an initiative to reduce -- or even eliminate -- property taxes for fulltime Florida homeowners?!

June 2 UPDATE -

Governor Ron DeSantis has successfully advanced the "Save Our Homes from Excessive Property Taxes" initiative, a constitutional amendment approved by the Florida Legislature on June 2, 2026, that will appear on the November 3, 2026 ballot. The measure requires 60% voter approval to enact and aims to drastically reduce property taxes for primary Florida residents by increasing the homestead exemption from the current $50,000 to $150,000 on January 1, 2027, and further to $250,000 by January 1, 2028, while protecting Schools and other critical funding.

Be sure to Vote on November 3, 2026 on a property tax reform amendment.

What else can we do? Take a moment to peek at our county's budget https://hcfl.gov/government/budget/budget-information and for county comminissioners who are financially responsible.

Watch or attend the Hillsborough County DOGE Liaison committee meetings - https://hcfl.gov/councils/hillsborough-doge-liaison-committee.

List of current HIllsborough county commissioners -https://hcfl.gov/government/board-of-county-commissioners. Four seats are up for election in 2026.
Links re county commission election info: https://www.votehillsborough.gov/191/Offices-Up-for-Election and nomination info https://www.votehillsborough.gov/DocumentCenter/View/216/County-Commission-Fact-Sheet-PDF?bidId=

Watch this excellent summary by YouTube's Grant Warrington https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rm0bNo_sPBE

Find your representative and commissioner's contact information here by entering a Medley street (can be 'Scuba Crest')- https://hillsborough.maps.arcgis.com/apps/InformationLookup/index.html?

NEW - the Hillsborough County DOGE liaison group posts their meetings here -- https://hcfl.gov/councils/hillsborough-doge-liaison-committee. Our CDDs are pubic entities and are presumably covered under DOGE.