A Miami commissioner has claimed the city is overspending on contracted workers — and said he will ask Florida's DOGE task force to investigate.
Last month, commissioners unanimously approved a resolution inviting the state's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) office to visit the city and "assist" officials in looking for government waste.
At a press conference Monday, Commissioner Joe Carollo told reporters that his own investigation found the city is spending nearly $21 million on contracted workers employed by consulting firms that do work for city departments. In particular, Carollo claims that Miami's building department contracts with 122 people that the city pays an average of about $131,000 a year though they are not full-time government employees.
"Maybe this is the reason everything costs so much more for us in the city and takes so much longer," Carollo said. He claimed that if these jobs were done by city employees the cost to taxpayers would be lower.
“I have no idea what these people do for the city, or if they’re deserving of such high salaries, but I will say that all of these people should be employees of the City of Miami if they’re working for us like this," he said.
Carollo said his office requested the payment data from the office of the City Manager. WLRN has asked the office to provide this information for verification and to respond to the claims of overspending.
The commissioner said he would be sending this information to the state's DOGE task force and ask them to investigate how many of these contractors can be cut, and what their pay should be.
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President Donald Trump's advisor, billionaire Elon Musk, created the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the federal level shortly after Trump took office. The acronym is named for a cryptocurrency based on an internet meme, of which Musk was a major investor and supporter.
Though DOGE is not an official office of the federal government, it has nonetheless been given the power to slash funding and positions from a myriad of federal agencies and initiatives including national parks, disaster management and the arts.
Following suit with the federal government, several states have created their own offices of government efficiency, including Florida.
Governor Ron DeSantis created the state's own DOGE task force by executive order in February. On March 18, the task force sent letters to municipal governments throughout Florida mandating they respond to questions about their financial health or else be found guilty of violating state law.
At an April 24 Miami City Commission meeting, the city's Chief Financial Officer, Larry Spring, informed commissioners that Miami complied with that mandate.
At that same meeting, commissioners unanimously voted in favor of inviting a team from the governor's initiative to seek out efficiencies, but Chairwoman Christine King and Commissioner Pardo asserted that they would not support removal of entire city departments.
