(The Center Square) \u2013 The administrator of Broward County late Tuesday questioned the accusations of excessive spending by Florida’s chief financial officer.<\/p>\n
In a news conference, state CFO Blaise Ingoglia said Broward County\u2019s general fund budget over the last five years has increased $190 million more than could be justified by population growth and inflation.<\/p>\n
Those numbers were challenged by Administrator Monica Cepero.<\/p>\n
\u201cThus far, we have been unable to verify the sources of data used to arrive at these values,\u201d Cepero said in a statement. \u201cFor example, neither the population growth nor the inflationary index match commonly used sources, nor can we confirm the correct adopted general fund budget amounts were used in his calculations. \u201c<\/p>\n
Florida\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency mirrors a federal effort by the same name and has not yet issued a report on Broward, Cepero said. A DOGE team visited Broward in July, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo report from that exercise has yet been released,\u201d Cepero said.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the mayor of Jacksonville, a government that was also singled out by Ingoglia for overspending, on Wednesday highlighted that city\u2019s efforts to operate more efficiently.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are turning around permits in half the time we used to,\u201d Mayor Donna Deegan said in a statement. \u201cWe held the number of nonpublic safety city employees flat despite the fastest growing population in Florida. We have a top-tier AA+ distinction from the leading ratings agency.\u201d<\/p>\n
She touted the Proto Box which uses three dimensional \u201chologram\u201d technology to present the mayor greeting travelers at the airport and images highlighting the city\u2019s NFL team, the Jaguars.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe city of Jacksonville has spent more than 1,000 staff hours cooperating with Florida DOGE throughout this year,\u201d the mayor said. \u201cThe opportunity cost for this time is well above the $75,000 cost of the Proto Box itself, which was funded by the Technology Solutions Division and represents a mere 0.0000375% of the city budget.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(The Center Square) \u2013 The administrator of Broward County late Tuesday questioned the accusations of excessive spending by…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":272635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[5229,44221,7627,38479,3188,723,7310,141375,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-272634","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-blaise-ingoglia","10":"tag-broward-county","11":"tag-chief-financial-officer","12":"tag-fl","13":"tag-florida","14":"tag-jacksonville","15":"tag-monica-cepero","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115306212130088960","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}