The federal DOGE began when President Donald Trump entered office. The purpose of the department was to find waste in the government, resulting in the firing of 200,000 federal workers and drastic cuts to multiple federal departments, such as the Department of Education and the Department of Justice.
Since then, 16 states have created efficient initiatives within their own states, modeled after DOGE with some slight differences. Florida is one of the states that created its own DOGE, which will operate for one year, through the executive order of Governor Ron DeSantis.
According to DeSantis, the teams that are sent out across the state will closely analyze local government spending. Scheduled stops include the city of Gainesville, home to the University of Florida, and Broward County, and more may be on the way.
The governor's office reported that the taxpayers of Broward County have for years now "watched as the county government has increased burdens on property owners to the annual tune of over $450 million dollars" in additional ad valorem tax collections.
"This has been part of a spending spree that has seen Broward County's annual operating budget expand by over $1.2 billion during a time when the county's population has grown by less than 5%," said the governor's office in a press release.
Meanwhile, the City of Gainesville will spend at least $90 million this year than it did four years ago.
"This increase in spending is now levied in part on Gainesville property owners, who are expected to pay 85% more in property taxes than what they paid in 2020," said the governor's office. "This is due to both a rate increase and to rising property values that should be, but have not been, offset by a corresponding cut in taxes."
As a result, the governor's office said that Gainesville's taxpayers are carrying an additional $90 million burden each year.
Doug Wheeler, director of the George Gibbs Center for Economic Prosperity at the Tallahassee-based James Madison Institute, applauds the effort from Florida's DOGE.
"We feel like anytime the government goes through the exercise of examining its fiscal policies, making sure that their policies reflect due diligence and fiscal responsibility, we think that's a good thing," says Wheeler. "It's a good thing at the federal level, it's a good thing at the state level, and we think it's a good thing at the local level."
