Seminole County Commission fires back after state CFO ‘overspending’ accusations

An unexpected accusation by the newly appointed Florida chief financial officer saw backlash by the Seminole County Commission this week as the Commission seeks more clarification on why the county has been targeted for “overspending.” 

The accusation took the Commission by surprise, as the county had expected a collaborative process with the state after the CFO, Blaise Ingoglia, had requested financial documents earlier in the year, but then had never followed up with any lines of inquiry. 

“[We anticipated] that whatever work they did would have been collaborative if they had reached out to us and said ‘Hey we have a question about this. We have a question about that. Can we answer this? Can we answer that?’ So I checked with staff and found out none of that ever happened,” County Commission Chairman Jay Zembower said.  

Then on Oct. 7, Ingoglia arrived in Seminole County and announced that the county had overspent by $48,445,891 since the 2019-2020 fiscal year. 

How the CFO, operating out of the state’s newly created Department of Government Efficiency, came about that specific figure is unclear, Zembower said. It didn’t come from an audit, he said, rather it came from a “simple fifth grade math equation that was done was basically take five years worth of our total budgets [and] apply [the Consumer Price Index] to it.

“We had no reach out for anybody to question us,” Zembower said. “‘What does this mean? What does that mean? Can you explain what this expense is?’ None of that happened. Instead we had the CFO show up and ‘knock knock, Seminole County. I’m here.’”

“I don’t disagree with Mr. Ingoglia’s mission to make sure there’s not waste, fraud or abuse,” Zembower said. “I think all five of the commissioners who sit here agree with that as well. But we do expect collaboration.”

State’s “DOGE” department targets city/county finances  

“We’ve accounted for everything that local government should and would need,” Ingoglia told political watchdog publication Florida Politics on Oct. 7. Ingoglia added that he had not audited the county’s finances. 

The CFO’s office had reportedly targeted Seminole County after the CFO had been accused of, over the summer, specifically targeting the financial practices of Democratic-run municipalities, such as Gainesville and Broward County. 

In 2023, before being appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis as Florida’s chief financial officer, Ingoglia had gained media attention for, as a state representative, introducing a bill in the Florida Legislature that would eliminate the Democratic Party in the state.

Zembower questions why Clerk/Comptroller office wasn’t part of CFO’s calculations

But Zembower did point to what he called an issue with the Seminole County Clerk of the Court and Comptroller’s office, run by Grant Maloy. Zembower said that that office’s budget has increased significantly in the past five years, contributing to the county’s increased overall budget. 

“There’s two budgets the CFO has direct oversight on; that is the county’s tax collector and the clerk of the courts,” Zembower said. “Tax collector actually has a state algorithm that must adhere to that budget. The clerk’s, not so much…The clerk’s budget has grown 90% [from 2019 to 2025], more than any constitutional [officer], more than any other department in the county,” Zembower said. “We’ve asked questions. Sometimes we get answers, sometimes we don’t get answers.” 

But that wasn’t mentioned by Ingoglia in singling out the county, Zembower said. 

“We’ve seen bonuses given out which we were told aren’t bonuses,” he said. “And yet the one of two items that the state CFO has oversight of, this was never mentioned. A 90% egregious growth on a constitutional officer’s budget was never mentioned by the CFO.”

But Maloy said Wednesday that his department has shrunk, rather than expanded, in the past 18 years. 

“​​…this Clerk’s Office is smaller than it was in 2006,” Maloy said. “There are fewer employees, less office space and less money when you factor inflation. This has happened while clerks are given more responsibilities and unfunded mandates. What other government agency can say it’s smaller than 18 years ago?”

He pointed to a comparison of the Clerk and Comptroller’s office in 2006, adjusted for inflation, versus the 2024 budget showing the 2024 budget was nearly 49% less than in 2006. He did not address Zembower’s accusation of a 90% budget increase between 2019 and 2025, which Zembower has said led to a budget increase of $2.9 million over that period of time. You can see Maloy’s data below.

“I have spent time trying to explain the budget to [Zembower],” Maloy said. “I can’t explain why he continues to mislead the public.”

County still plans to work with the state

Zembower said that he still wants to work with the state, and welcomes additional scrutiny to find any waste, but said county staff has pored over the budget to find what the state might consider waste, and hasn’t found anything that would amount to the $48 million overspending number the CFO’s office is saying. 

“We’ve been living this for well over a year,” Zembower said of the budgeting process. “This budget cycle our staff is probably worn out by now because we asked them to start working on this a long time ago. We forced them to go back through it. We forced ourselves to go back through it. We brought people from Florida State to do an AI run on this budget. We’ve also brought in people from the outside to make a run on this budget, so we’ve done everything we think is reasonable and prudent to do with that.”

Commissioner Lee Constantine was more direct about how he saw the CFO’s approach toward the county.

“What they are doing is a mission,” Constantine said. “It is not based on science or an audit or anything else.”