JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — From funding for a local LGBTQ group, sidewalks, excessive overtime and the airport HoloDonna, the newly published Statewide DOGE report lays out as much as $63 million in Jacksonville city spending it deems fraud, waste or abuse.

The report’s release comes months after state auditors descended on Jacksonville and a dozen other municipalities throughout the state.

$500,000 of excessive overtime, including eight employees who averaged more than 700 hours each in a single year, is just one of the Jacksonville expenses deemed “excessive” in the report.

Others include $7.5 million spent on a one-mile stretch of sidewalk, $75,000 for the airport HoloDonna and $1.9 million for cultural grants.

“Well, here we are. We got proof,” Councilmember Rory Diamond (R-District 13) said.

Diamond said he hopes the report will help guide council members as they craft next year’s budget.

“We have overtime going on. We have a special assistant to the mayor who is getting paid $105 an hour for part-time work. I mean this is just a waste of money,” Diamond said.

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But Councilmember Jimmy Peluso (D-District 7) argued the report is just noise, noting it falls far short of identifying the $200 million of excess spending alleged by Florida’s CFO back in September.

He also argued some of the critiques, like $54 million spent on sidewalks, are perfectly appropriate budget items.

“It’s just like kind of confusing. What is one man’s waste is certainly not what our own constituents are telling us,” Peluso said.

The report also took aim at spending it characterized as “DEI”.

It knocked the city’s police and fire pension fund for investing $30 million with Victory Park Capital, a company the report accused of prioritizing DEI and ESG.

The pension fund claimed its investments are compliant with a state law passed back in 2023 that banned government pension funds from being invested based on ESG principles.

“The Pension Fund updated its Investment Policy Statement in December 2023 to ensure full compliance with Florida law and formally notified all investment managers of the statutory requirements and the Fund’s compliance policy,” Jacksonville Police and Fire Pension Fund Executive Director Timothy Johnson said in an emailed statement.

“The Fund’s actions reflect a clear and consistent commitment to complying with state law while fulfilling its fiduciary duty to members and beneficiaries,” Johnson said.

Under the DEI banner, the report also listed $27,000 for local LGBTQ group JASMYN, $480,000 for the Cathedral Arts Project, which serves “justice-involved youth,” and even the city’s $538,000 spend on the Jacksonville Symphony.

Action News Jax reached out to all three groups for comment, but has not heard back.

“It’s just so bizarre to me. The idea of what DEI is and isn’t is still such an amorphous thing,” Peluso said.

But Duval DOGE Chair Ron Salem (R-Group 2 At-Large) said he sees those DEI-related spends as an easy starting point for making cuts.

“If we need to get with the organizations that we’re funding and tell them no DEI or we’ll pull it out or something like that,” Salem said.

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The mayor’s office sent a lengthy statement responding to the Florida DOGE report, downplaying many of the findings as “not new or hidden” and highlighting internal efforts to improve the efficiency of city government.

“The results speak for themselves: reading scores are up, infrastructure projects are up, roads resurfaced are up, free park attendance is up, families on health insurance are up, veterans getting jobs are up, population growth is up. And our property tax rate remains the lowest of any big city in Florida, while the city’s budget carries an A+ bond rating,” a spokesperson for the mayor’s office said in a statement, “We’ve achieved all this through LEAN process improvements, automation and AI tools, and disciplined limits on staff growth and overtime while serving a rapidly growing population.”

The mayor’s office also emphasized city budgets are made as part of a collaborative effort with council and “no budget passes without final approval by Council”.

But Salem suggested some of the items identified as DEI were allocations made outside the control of council.

“We’ve worked very hard to get it all out, but somehow Mayor Deegan and her administration are continuing to fund some of this stuff and we’ve got to figure out how that’s occurring,” Salem said.

Salem revived a previously canceled meeting of the DOGE committee after seeing the state report.

He plans to take a deep dive into the report’s findings and suggestions during that meeting next Tuesday.

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