Last week, a Republican lawmaker announced that he was sinking $5 million of his own money into his campaign for state CFO, saying he wants to use the post to take a serious look at how the state wastes money.
It’s about damn time.
For the past year, the chief financial officer’s post has been used for full-bore buffoonery.
Scott Maxwell is an Orlando Sentinel columnist.
Current CFO Blaise Ingoglia — a Republican who didn’t win the post, but was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis — has spent his time traipsing around the state, staging press conferences and foaming at the mouth about local officials while completely ignoring improper and wasteful spending at the state.
Ingoglia has screamed about things like a few thousand dollars in gas stipends for Orlando’s poet laureate while ignoring tens of millions of dollars in scandalous spending, hundreds of millions of dollars in no-bid and “emergency” contracts and missing audits that state law says must be conducted, but haven’t.
This is a guy who thought he’d be cute by renaming his office team FAFO — an acronym for F*** Around and Find Out — while saying it also stood for Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight. A guy who loves to talk tough and call others names but whose office sent armed state agents to the home of a rank-and-file Floridian who sent Ingoglia a postcard that said: “You lack values.”
State Rep. Kevin Steele, R-Dade City, says he wants to do better and boot Ingoglia out of office.
While Ingoglia is cosplaying as an auditor, Steele says he wants to fight waste, corruption and fraud “at every level of state government.”
Note that Steele specifically cited state government, the area the CFO is supposed to focus on — if he’s actually doing his job anyway.
Steele also says he wants to lower property taxes and insurance rates and offer something Floridians haven’t seen in a while — “no nonsense.”
And Steele, a tech company founder who’s one of the Legislature’s wealthiest members with his 2024 disclosure showing a net worth of about $150 million, is showing he’s serious by putting $5 million of his own money into his campaign.
Steele also has the early support of U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, while Ingoglia has been endorsed by DeSantis and a truckload of GOP legislators.
No Democrats have filed yet, possibly because Democrats have proven unable to win statewide, even if the race is a 100-yard dash and they’re given a 90-yard head start.
Anyone who even casually follows Florida headlines knows this state has been embroiled in numerous spending scandals, almost all of which Ingoglia has consistently and conveniently ignored.
Chief among them are missing audits — required by law — on the hundreds of millions of dollars in so-called “emergency” spending the governor has spent on no-bid deals and rushed contracts on projects like “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Even one of Donald Trump’s former border officials blasted the spending on the Everglades detention center, describing the glorified cages as “hastily assembled facilities, staffed by non-traditional vendors and unvetted state contractors … ripe for failure, mismanagement and corruption.”
Then there’s the Hope Florida scandal and a related one where tens of millions of dollars in state money meant to help poor, sick Floridians was diverted to campaign advertising.
And the outrageous land deal where DeSantis and his Cabinet members agreed to spend $83 million for four acres of barren land in the Panhandle — where nearby parcels had sold for pennies and dimes on the dollar — in a deal connected to a GOP donor previously involved in a bribery scandal.
On that last one, Ingoglia voiced some nonspecific objections, but didn’t do anything to stop the sky-high spending, making himself about as useful as teats on a bull.
I could go on, highlighting Ingoglia’s taxpayer-funded FAFO state tour where he has accused local officials of misspending without providing much, if any, evidence. But you’ve seen it all already.
Listen, I don’t know if Steele, his fellow Republican contender, will be much different. But I know he’s at least saying some of the right things — which is more than Ingoglia has done.
This state has had past CFO’s from both parties who did fine jobs, including Democrat Alex Sink and Republican Jeff Atwater. Ingoglia couldn’t hold a candle, much less audit its purchase, compared to those guys.
As Steele’s campaign said in a statement Tuesday: “Protecting taxpayers means doing the work, not putting on a show.”
Scott Maxwell is an Orlando Sentinel columnist. Contact him at smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com.
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2026/01/18/kevin-steele-ingoglia-cfo-buffoonery-2/
