Florida’s chief financial officer said Wednesday he is issuing subpoenas to Orange County employees and may bring in digital forensic investigators as the state’s DOGE team seeks documents related to the county’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
CFO Blaise Ingoglia accused Orange’s government of not being forthcoming when DOGE auditors showed up earlier this month demanding documents about county budgets, payroll, grants and DEI efforts, among other topics. It appeared county employees provided incomplete, scripted answers and may have withheld documents, he said.
“Orange County fooled around, and now they are about to find out,” Ingoglia, a Republican, said at an Orlando news conference attended by Gov. Ron DeSantis and local Republican lawmakers.
Orange is the first county to receive subpoenas from the Florida Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, he said. Digital forensic units from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement could be brought in to uncover the truth, Ingoglia said.
“Don’t lie to us,” he added.
DeSantis said he expects full compliance from local officials. “This is not performative. He wants answers, and under the law, he’s entitled to answers,” DeSantis said.
Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings denied the county withheld information and noted the state offered no evidence to support the allegations
“Orange County Government fully cooperated with the Florida DOGE audit team providing all the data and documents requested,” he said. “No employee was instructed to alter, change or delete any documents.”
County employees may have read from notes or documents, but they weren’t scripted in their remarks, Demings said.
“We welcome the opportunity for full public transparency on this issue,” he said.
Demings’ office did not immediately respond to questions late Wednesday about whether it would investigate the state’s allegations.
Ingoglia said investigators with the state’s DOGE task force received a tip that county employees changed the names of DEI-related files in an attempt to hide information. DeSantis signed a law two years ago that targets DEI efforts in Florida, and the Trump administration has been working to root out such efforts, too.
“We started receiving those tips that Orange County employees were possibly tampering with documents to circumvent our review of their egregious spending,” he said. “So when we started questioning, what we got were some shady answers, some incomplete answers. … Some people were just basically reading off of a script.”
The DOGE team collected about 1.2 million emails related to DEI, but only one of six DEI grants issued by the county was mentioned, suggesting not all the records were provided, Ingoglia said. Procurement documents were also missing, he said.
It is not clear how many subpoenas might be issued.
DOGE auditors arrived in Orange County on Aug. 5 to collect a cache of files for an examination of county spending. The state teams have been visiting other counties, too, part of an effort to root out waste and highlight DeSantis’ belief that local governments spend too much and with better management could get by without homeowners’ property taxes.
State Sen. Jason Brodeur, a Republican who represents part of Orange, joined in the criticism of the county, saying it had “demonstrated an unwillingness to fully cooperate.”
DOGE audits, he said, are “an opportunity for better spending. This is an opportunity for us to get better for the taxpayer. It’s not an opportunity to double down on woke policies and poor spending habits.”
Wednesday’s announcement should be a warning to other local governments, he added. “We are putting all these jurisdictions on notice. As the governor said, cooperation is no longer an option. We tried to play nice. Didn’t work,” he said.
But Orange County Commissioner Nicole Wilson said the county’s government was being wrongly targeted because of its success.
“Our local economy is booming, our population has been steadily growing and that growth requires us to increase our investment in public safety and public services,” she said. “The governor and some of his cronies don’t like our diverse population, our welcoming spirit and our efforts to treat everyone equally without regard to race religion or so so economic status.”