A day after Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia blasted Palm Beach County as the statewide leader of “waste, fraud and abuse,” County Administrator Joe Abruzzo on Friday struck back, calling the financial chief’s claims “fictitious” and his tactics questionable.
If Ingoglia was really concerned about rooting out waste, the financial chief would have sat down with county staff to discuss the findings of the state’s Elon Musk-styled government efficiency team and worked with them to cut costs, Abruzzo said.
Instead, the Republican gubernatorial appointee, who is up for election next year, invited supporters to a news conference at the Okeechobee Steakhouse in West Palm Beach on Thursday and declared that the team had identified $344 million in wasteful county spending in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.
“We have no idea how they came up with that number,” said Abruzzo, a former Democratic state lawmaker who worked with Ingoglia in the Florida Legislature.
READ MORE: Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia torches Miami's 'wasteful' spending, calls for property tax relief
Ingoglia offered no specifics during his roughly hourlong presentation at the steakhouse, saying only that it was based on increases in inflation and population.
County taxpayers are getting shafted, he said. That’s why, he said, people should support his election bid and a proposed 2026 constitutional amendment to eliminate or restrict taxes on homesteads.
“This is excessive and wasteful spending,” Ingoglia said, holding up a sign with $344,620,981 written on it. “That is the biggest number we’ve seen in the state of Florida so far this year.”
He got chuckles when he explained that the team is called the Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight, known as FAFO. In the webosphere, the initials stand for “F*** Around and Find Out.”
Even basic tax collection number doesn’t add up
Abruzzo said he and county budget director Sherry Brown spent hours on Friday trying to figure out how Ingoglia came up with the eye-popping number.
They couldn’t.
“He may not understand the budget process,” Abruzzo said despite Ingoglia’s claims to the contrary.
“I spent 20 years analyzing local governments,” said Ingoglia, a homebuilder before joining the Legislature in 2014. “I know what I’m doing.”
While Ingoglia said the county collected $878 million more in taxes between the 2020 and 2025 fiscal years, that simply isn’t true, Abruzzo said. County records show the tax-supported part of the county budget increased by nearly $480 million during those six years.
Abruzzo said he suspects Ingoglia combined the budgets from all the taxing units in the county, including the school board, and subtracted the 2020 budget from the 2025 budget.
“That is the only thing that even came close,” he said.
For Ingoglia, the growth in spending is proof that cuts need to be made.
“If government didn’t grow, it wouldn’t need all that money. If it didn’t need all that money, you would not have to be taxed to pay for it. Does everybody understand that?” Ingoglia said. “So even if I didn’t show one line item of waste, fraud or abuse — trust me, there’s a ton — but even if I didn’t, it is the growth of government itself that we need to be concerned with, because that’s where all the big chunk of the money is going.”
CPI doesn’t cover government spending
In hopes of getting to the bottom of the mystery, Abruzzo on Friday sent Ingoglia a public records request, asking for detailed information about how the calculations were made.
But, based on comments Ingoglia made at the news conference, the entire exercise was based on faulty methodology, Abruzzo said.
Calling the calculations “simple,” Ingoglia indicated that the team used the Consumer Price Index to determine how much inflation fueled county budget increases.
But, Abruzzo said, the CPI is based on a market basket survey of household goods, including housing, transportation, food, medical care and clothing. The cost of goods increased 21.2% from 2020 to 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s inflation calculator.
The CPI doesn’t capture the goods that drive government spending, he said.
“Counties do not operate under consumer inflation,” he wrote. “The cost centers that drive local government … have experienced significantly higher inflation since 2019.”
For instance, construction costs for buildings, utilities, and roads increased 30% to 45%. Materials such as steel, concrete and electrical components rose 25% to 75%, he said.
Likewise, the cost of fleet vehicles, fire trucks, ambulances and heavy equipment increased 30% to 50%. Public-sector labor costs rose 20% to 30% overall and 25% to 35% for police and firefighters due to workforce shortages and legally mandated wage hikes.
“Applying consumer-style inflation to government functions therefore understates actual cost pressures and may overstate the appearance of ‘excess’ spending,” Abruzzo wrote.
Sheriff’s spending singled out for praise
During his talk, Ingoglia praised the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office as a paragon of fiscal responsibility.
“Based on the index of population and inflation, it was $11 million under what it should have been,” Ingoglia said. “So the sheriff in Palm Beach County is making the general fund look better. They have held the budget in check.”
The sheriff’s budget, which accounts for roughly 40% of the county’s tax-supported spending, increased by 8.6%, to $902 million, in 2025, and topped $1 billion this year, a nearly 11% jump. Spending by county departments increased 2.3%, Abruzzo said.
In his letter, Abruzzo didn’t dispute the need to pay for public safety. But, he pointed out that if county commissioners follow Ingoglia’s suggestion and leave the sheriff’s budget untouched, even deeper cuts would be needed to eliminate what the financial chief claims is $344 million in wasteful spending.
After collecting taxes to pay for the sheriff and other constitutional officers, such as the property appraiser and elections supervisor, the commission directly controls $730 million of tax spending, he wrote. That figure excludes fire-rescue, which comes through a separate property tax.
The consequences of a nearly 50% reduction in spending by county departments would be devastating, Abruzzo said. Road construction would stop. County parks would either close or people would be charged “exorbitant fees” to use them, he said. Response times for fire-rescue services would increase.
Further, changes Abruzzo wants to make to increase efficiency would be shelved.
Plans to use artificial intelligence to control traffic lights, which studies have shown reduce congestion, would be put on hold, he said. His plans to create an office to review contracts to make sure the county is getting the best deal would disappear. Ditto his plans to take steps to streamline the permitting process for builders, developers and homeowners.
“A lot of people focus on cuts, but what about advancing our community?” Abruzzo asked. “All of that comes to a screeching halt.”
Ingoglia said he expected such dire claims would be made by public officials. “They use the bogeyman of delayed 911 calls to police and fire,” he said. “Don’t fall for it when government says they need every dollar.”
If $344 million were eliminated from the county budget, Ingoglia said the owner of a home with a taxable value of $700,000 would save $386 in taxes.
But, Abruzzo wondered, at what cost? “Our residents would be beyond upset if they knew what he was requiring us to cut,” he said.
Palm Beach County still awaiting audit results
Abruzzo said he is willing to work with the state’s efficiency team. When he became clerk of courts in 2021, he said he asked state auditors to review the books. He said he understands the value of having outsiders analyze spending.
But, he said, meaningful audits take time. The state team spent two days in the county in August and promised they would send a report of their findings in 60 days. Abruzzo, who became county administrator the day they arrived, hasn’t heard anything back. He said he assumes they are still crunching numbers.
Gov. Ron DeSantis is demanding lawmakers put measures on next year’s ballot to slash property taxes, prompting property tax reform fervor among lawmakers.
A recent county analysis of the most far-reaching state House tax cut proposal, HRJ 201, would eliminate more than $600 million from the county general fund. Since it would leave law enforcement spending intact, that would amount to cutting 90% of all other county services, including $124 million of capital spending.
The county spends $2.4 billion in its general fund.
Abruzzo said he wishes state officials would focus on other issues that would help homeowners, such as bringing down insurance rates that are significantly higher than the national average. People can write off property taxes on their federal income tax. That option isn’t available for home insurance.
“If the state put this much effort into lowering home insurance costs rather than focus on fictitious tax cuts, the people would be much better off,” he said.
Ingoglia insisted the state has lowered home insurance rates. His Republican opponent for CFO, Kevin Steele, described the high costs as a crisis.
The two also differ on what reforms are needed. Steele told WFSU Public Media radio in Tallahassee that the focus should be on state agencies, not local governments.
Still, Ingoglia insisted, property tax reform is needed. The county is a poster child for it, he said.
“Palm Beach County needs to do better,” he said. “The taxpayers deserve better.”
This story was originally published by Stet News Palm Beach, a WLRN News partner.
