ORLANDO, Fla. – Florida DOGE employees are coming to the City of Orlando.
On Friday, the city released a letter it received from the Florida Department of Government Efficiency, dated July 30.
Like the letter Orange County government received earlier this week, it requests DOGE access to whatever city facilities, data systems and personnel are needed to investigate a trove of information going back to 2019 on everything from contracting to personnel salaries to DEI and environment-related programs to homeless services.
[WATCH: Florida DOGE to audit Orange County’s budget]
DOGE officials will be on hand on Aug. 11 and Aug. 12 for the audit. You can read the full letter at the bottom of the story.
Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer released the following statement to News 6:
“The City of Orlando has received a letter from the Florida Department of Government Efficiency requesting a review of various information on the city’s financial management and operations. Not only do we plan to cooperate, we also intend to share how the City of Orlando operates efficiently and in a financially-responsible manner.”
Local governments are supposed to provide financial audits to the Florida auditor general. The city last submitted one that was released on Sept. 30, 2024.
The Florida Auditor General also has the ability to audit any local government at any time. But according to the auditor general’s website, no audit has been done on Orlando since at least 2010.
However, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has launched a campaign to go after county and city governments as a way to push for property tax reform. DeSantis has championed even getting rid of local property taxes altogether.
The audits are part of that.
Earlier this year, the state requested financial documents from every county and city government as a prelude to these audits.
The Florida DOGE team is targeting specific areas of the county’s budget:
- Procurement and contracting, including all contracts and procurements in excess of $10,000.
- Personnel Compensation, including pay, overtime and bonuses for all employees from 2019 to the present, along with employment records.
- Property management, including records of all tangible property, any sales, any city-owned property leased to another group and expenditures on renovations.
- Utilities, including all utility rate studies.
- Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, including all jobs since Jan. 1, 2020, that had a duty to advance DEI, any training related to DEI or purported “implicit bias,” and any programs or grants that targeted specific groups.
- DOGE wants to look specifically at the city’s Office of Multicultural Affairs and Office of Equity, including initiatives, policies, events and goals.
- A category called “Green New Deal,” which looks to be about any environmental or green energy programs supported by the city, or the city’s goal of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2030. It includes documents on purchasing EV infrastructure or vehicles, including solar power systems, and records on training related to climate change, battery-operated vehicles, or solar power.
- Grants and other spending, requesting all records related to grants made to non-governmental organizations, plus vehicle allowances and lobbying efforts.
- Financial management and economic development, including records related to financial reserves and information on projects that are part of the city’s Capital Improvement Plan, apart from roads and transportation projects.
- And finally, Homeless Services, including direct spending by the city, grants to other groups, data on the city’s Accelerate Orlando Initiative for affordable housing projects, and the city’s efforts to measure the programs’ effectiveness. DOGE also wants all data the city might have on the mental health, crime, immigration status, substance abuse and public service usage in connection with Orlando’s homeless and affordable housing services.
The city of Orlando has kept its property tax rates flat in recent years, but property values have skyrocketed, like in other parts of Florida, and that has led to increased revenues.
The city’s budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year was $1.8 billion, an increase of 3% from the previous year, according to documents on Orlando’s budget website.
According to a budget workshop presentation from last month, Orlando’s budget for the next fiscal year is essentially the same.
Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia told News 6 in an exclusive interview this week that local governments grew used to having larger budgets because of pandemic-era rescue funds.
“I will tell you that local governments, general fund budgets, the portions that is funded by your property taxes have grown anywhere between 60 to 120 percent over the last five years post COVID," Ingoglia told Matt Austin. “They took all the extra COVID money that was given by the federal government flowing through the state to their local municipalities and counties and they’ve added these programs that were never meant to be there long-term. So they basically created this new base of spending and what we’re saying is that base of spending should not be that high.”
[VIDEO: New Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia defends DOGE, ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ and home insurance costs]
[READ the Florida DOGE letter to the City of Orlando]
DOGE Letter to Orlando (July 30 2025) by Christie Zizo on Scribd