Orange County Jerry Demings and Nicole Wilson refute wasteful spending claims

After the recent Department of Government Efficiency assessment in Orange County, Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia concluded the county is spending nearly $200 million more than it should. 

During a press conference Monday, Sept. 15, Ingoglia said the people of Florida are “sick and tired” of the wasteful spending of tax dollars. 

“Orange County is wastefully and excessively spending nearly $200 million in taxpayer funds, and it is high time that the taxpayers are armed with the information that they need to hold their locally elected officials accountable,” he said.

According to Ingoglia, Orange County’s General Fund has increased by $559,151,494, or 53.62%, since 2020.

Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings disputed those claims and said Ingoglia is using “fuzzy math.” 

“Regarding the budget, our General Fund increased by $474 million, not $559 million, as claimed by the CFO,” Demings said. 

Furthermore, Demings said the county’s next budget — $8.2 billion — is not enough for its citizens and for the tourists the county welcomes annually.

During the Winter Garden Chamber of Commerce’s State of the County event Sept. 17, Demings said the county has to provide services, on average, to an extra 206,000 tourists every day. No other community in Florida had that kind of pressure on them, he said. 

Demings said the county gets audited every year, and it would be difficult for it to misspend funds with an elected auditor. 

“As the state has been endeavoring to lower its budget, they increased mandates on local government,” he said. “For example, every local government municipality and county has to have a plan of action on how they’re going to deal with homelessness. … The state has not allocated one dime for us to address homelessness. … We have to find that money from where we have discretionary funds, because our budgets, we have some restricted revenue sources.” 

Demings said the county is spending taxpayer money on the people.

District 1 County Commissioner Nicole Wilson agreed.

“We’re not doing the kinds of things that you see at the state level, where the governor flies all over the country campaigning; it’s much less glamorous,” Wilson said. “We put it into water treatment, sidewalk connections, we put it into putting stop signs at the end of streets, but all those things require maintenance.” 

Besides that, about 25% of the General Fund goes directly to public safety such as the Sheriff’s Office, fire departments and the Orange County Jail — all essential components of government, Wilson said.

“We’re going to do really everything we can, but not risk anyone’s safety, not at the risk of public safety,” she said. “And that’s the kind of cuts they’re looking at. They’re not coming for the multicultural center. They’re not coming for the diversity program. They are talking about big slashing cuts to things like our corrections division. And then what? Do we want to go to a volunteer fire station? I don’t.” 

Both Demings and Wilson said the county is not misspending taxpayer money and are servants to the community. 

“To have somebody like Blaise Ingoglia out of Spring Hill, Florida, come in and say that we are somehow not benefiting the county’s population is very disappointing,” Wilson said. “He’s not well informed.” 

Orange County has an independently elected comptroller, a senior financial manager responsible for overseeing the budget, financial accountability within the government and financial reporting. 

“Ingoglia and the governor, I believe, wanted to swoop in and make a press conference instead of actually having a conversation about efficiency,” Wilson said. “And it’s unfortunate, because we’ve taken efficiency very seriously here for way longer than DOGE was a thing.”

Wilson said the county is transparent in its spending and hopes people hold the state government accountable and ask them to be transparent and efficient, as well. 

“I want people to get involved and understand we work for them,” she said. “It’s not the other way around. We don’t work against them, we were hired by them to work for them.”