For two months now, Gov. Ron DeSantis and his newly appointed CFO have been cosplaying as angry CPAs, stomping all over the state and screaming about cities and counties where taxes are supposedly too high.

But do you know where this indignant duo isn’t visiting and screaming? Places like Seminole County that are actually jacking up taxes by tens of millions of dollars.

Seem odd to you? Not if you understand politics.

Scott Maxwell is an Orlando Sentinel columnist.

DeSantis and CFO Blaise Ingoglia, both Republicans, have been taking their tantrum tour to Democratic strongholds like Broward County and Orlando — which aren’t raising tax rates — while ignoring Republican-led Seminole County, which just voted three different times to raise three different sets of taxes (on property, gas and utilities) by more than $60 million.

A Sentinel reporter asked Ingoglia at one of his histrionic-filled press conferences if his DOGE team was looking at the tax-hikers in Seminole.

Ingoglia’s response: “With Seminole, no, but I will tell you that every single county, every city in this state is going through the same thing.”

Please re-read that last sentence. He tells you that “every single county” is going “through the same thing” right after acknowledging that they’re not. These people think you’re stupid.

So what are these outrage actors looking at? Well, as the Sentinel recently reported, when DOGE swooped into Orange County — which, again, held the line on tax rates — they issued subpoenas and demanded records about grants to groups like the Orlando Youth Alliance.

So what kind of massive waste is the Youth Alliance perpetrating? Well, the tiny nonprofit received about $40,000 a year — less than 0.0001% of the county budget — to help LGBTQ youth, particularly those experiencing trauma and are, as the group’s grant application said, “more likely to commit suicide.”

Yes, DOGE is eyeing a $40,000 grant meant to help teens in trauma while ignoring $60 million in tax hikes a few miles away.

I actually helped host a fundraiser for the Youth Alliance last month and watched tearful 20-somethings talk about how the group helped rescue them from despair. These DOGEsters are as heartless as they are hypocritical.

They also seem pretty lazy. When Ingoglia took his fit-pitching to Hillsborough County, a purple county that has largely avoided red-meat issues, he accused the county of wasting precisely $278,951,562 — though the Tampa Bay Times noted: “Ingoglia did not provide specific examples of wasteful spending.” So a specific number with no specifics.

Also, while Ingoglia and DeSantis scream about their supposed support for transparency and audits, the state is hiding its own public records, ignoring its own spending scandals and dodging audits that are required by law.

As the Sentinel previously reported, the state hasn’t conducted audits on the hundreds of millions of dollars DeSantis has spent over the past two years via his never-ending “emergency” declaration on immigration. Some of the money has been handed out via no-bid contracts to people with political connections — a recipe for waste fraud and abuse, which is why Florida Statute 252.3611 (B-3) says the hasty, unvetted spending must be audited. But that doesn’t seem to interest the DOGE team.

Also, while DOGE is demanding reams of public records from local cities and counties, the DeSantis administration has refused to release public records about how much public money it has spent on its crusade against colorful crosswalks, including how much it paid crews to erase rainbows in the middle of the night.

Also of no interest to DOGE: The $10 million at the center of the Hope Florida scandal where even GOP legislators alleged criminal activity took place in diverting public money to a private “charity” promoted by DeSantis’ wife. Pay no attention to that $10 million. The charities these guys are targeting are local ones that got a whopping 40 grand.

None of this is about accounting and transparency. It’s about politics and grievances.

And hypocrisy. The Florida Trident reported Ingoglia recently filed a budget request to get another $600,000 for his DOGE office, so that he could bloat his budget while fuming about bloated budgets.

The reality, of course, is that it’s not up to grandstanding politicians from Tallahassee to decide whether local officials in Seminole County are doing a good job. It’s up to the residents of that county who elected them. If voters want them gone, they’ll make that clear at the polls. That’s how democracy works.

But for the most part, Seminole seems to be run by serious people making tough decisions.

Unlike these double-standard DOGEsters whose selective targeting is as eye-rollingly hypocritical as it is nakedly political.

Scott Maxwell is an Orlando Sentinel columnist. Contact him at smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com.

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2025/09/28/florida-doge-hypocrisy-joke-ingoglia-desantis/