Blaise Ingoglia hits back at DOGE critics, blasts Seminole County for overtaxing

Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia^[1] led his latest episode of ripping local governments for what he calls overspending while taking aim at his critics during a news conference in Seminole County.

Ingoglia bristled at a recent Orlando Sentinel column^[2] that questioned his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE^[3]) critiques of a half-dozen^[4] local governments. The Sentinel piece labeled the DOGE efforts “laughable.”

Ingoglia rejected the criticism and defended his DOGE analysis, blaming criticism of his organization’s accounting on irresponsible local government functionaries.

“All they want to do is keep their large, bloated budgets,” Ingoglia said. “We’ve accounted for everything that local government should and would need.”

Critics have also warned that Ingoglia, a Republican, is targeting counties dominated by Democratic elected officials.

“Spending knows no partisan boundaries,” Ingoglia said, adding that every county he has addressed has plenty of Republican elected officials. “We are seeing it (overspending) at all levels of government.”

He then turned to the Seminole County government. The general fund budget in that Central Florida county has jumped from about $275 million in the 2019-20 fiscal year to about $475 million, Ingoglia said.

He said the Seminole County population has only grown by about 25,338 people in that time.

“Just because you have more people moving into a county does not mean that you have a blank check,” Ingoglia said. He said that the 2019-20 budget contained around $48 million in “excessive wasteful spending,” but with taxes being raised, the figure has increased to $77 million.

Ingoglia reiterated his call for a statewide referendum to outline taxing and spending measures for local governments that he wants to see appear on the November 2026 General Election ballot.

“Floridians have made it clear they want tax relief soon. That will come in November 2026,” Ingoglia said in his news conference held in Seminole County. “We’re immune to the parlor tricks of local governments who say they need all this money. … Stop lying to the taxpayer.”