Exactly a week after Gov. Ron DeSantis visited Gainesville to announce a state audit, local citizens and community groups stood Thursday in support of their local officials on the steps of City Hall, demanding the state not pry where it wasn’t needed.
The group of 50 to 60 protested the state’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) and pointed the finger back to what they called wasteful state spending, with Alligator Alcatraz and immigrant flights to Martha’s Vineyard as examples.
Speakers said Florida’s Home Rule authority lets locally elected officials decide how to best serve citizens and overpowers the state’s auditing power if no illegal activity is found.
North Central Florida Indivisible Executive Director Jyoti Parmar said local citizens know how to march into City Hall, let officials know how they feel and keep them accountable.
“We want local control,” Parmar said. “A government closer to the people is most accountable to the people. We, community organizations, and you, the public, hold our government accountable. And I’ll tell you, this city government has been more scrutinized than any other in the state of Florida over the last five years.”
Thursday marked the first of two days with state officials on the ground in Gainesville to conduct the audit. DeSantis has also announced audits into Hillsborough, Pinellas and Orange counties along with the city of Jacksonville.
“Florida’s DOGE efforts are owed to the taxpayer and yet another way their state is pursuing fiscal responsibility,” DeSantis said in a press release just hours after the Gainesville gathering.
But the crowd in front of City Hall disagreed and called out what they thought of DeSantis, including corruption charges.
One speaker said Floridians need to get ready for 2026 and vote for a new governor with none of DeSantis’ qualities.
DeSantis said last week that the DOGE audits were intended to set up discussions about property tax reform for the 2026 ballot, but Gainesville protesters also rebuked that idea and called it a tax cut for wealthy landowners.
“They claim to be doing this in our name, that it furthers the interest of taxpayers, but we see this investigation for what it really is,” an Alachua County Labor Coalition speaker said. “This witch hunt is nothing more than a political stunt to promote his disastrous plan to abolish property taxes for wealthy landowners in 2026.”
Gainesville Commissioner James Ingle said that state interference has been the cause of the city’s recent budget problems and forced tax increases after removing Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) from under City Commission control.
The change in management resulted in millions of loss revenue for Gainesville’s general fund—though the new management has supporters who say the city had overdrawn millions of dollars and crippled the utility’s finances.
“So that burden gets dropped onto the taxpayers of Gainesville, trying to make up the difference of the money that should be coming in this community but has been taken away,” Ingle said.
The state has asked for lists of documents, procedures and job positions. The letter sent to Mayor Harvey Ward listed 48 specific requests, some with multiple subpoints. The list included GRU, homeless services, transportation, grants, diversity positions, carbon emissions, management practices and procurement.
Communists opposing the lights being turned on!
De Santis is going communist, property taxes pay for police/fire/roads and schools in FL. I don’t want defund the police in FL
He is NOT defunding the police. Do your research. He is looking to see where the money is being wasted. If gov. high up officials are having parties and jetting around on the taxpayers dime. This way he can redirect the money to the police / firefighters / schools / parks and fixing our streets pavements neglect. With what we pay the city, our streets should not have so many tar circle patch fixes but actual pavement replaced. Let the audit happen before you grumble, see what turns up. People are projecting false fears ahead of things. Inciting fear and hate where it should not be.
Audit the “emergency” Alligator Alcatraz? Audit the “golf simulator” in the governor’s mansion? Audit the use of state dollars to fly to Iowa for campaigns? Oh wait, those flights were taken out of the sunshine for ‘security’ reasons. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Okay buddy. This BS doge crap is so DeSantis can continue to lick Trumps boot and turn around and fire honest good working employees in departments they politically disagree with even though these are city departments in city government and if citizens don’t want them, they can vote for commissioners who can change them. This is a power overreach just as the GRU board was and is. None of this is about budget as the city has been cutting budgets and departments for years with many operating understaffed as it is. This is not democracy, this is bull crap authoritarian shit.
You must be kidding. You can’t be serious. Have you looked at where he stands on anything?
You can argue with whether or not Gainesville could be better managed, but no serious person would EVER argue that DeSantis wishes to defund the police! LOL
DeSantis has been doing that ‘me too’ thing for almost his entire term of office, trying to be seen as the heir to DJT’s MAGA cult. It’s not, of coursee, just the Florida version of DOGE. It’s all the rest. Using taxpayer money for to promote his personal ambitions. HIs problem is that most of the country isn’t gonna buy his schtick.
Your finances and procedures can be perfect but I would be shocked if this group didn’t find SOMETHING to complain about. They’ll use every means at their disposal to stop any spending on things they don’t like.
Opposing an audit raises suspicion about what is being hidden.
Sorta agree. We were audited last year by the legislature. When will the audits of Desantis today Ben Sasse administration be released? When will audits of “emergency” spending on Alligator Alcatraz be pursued? What about spending on flights for failed Presidential campaigns?
Pretty sure the audit for Ben Sasse was already released with many questions.
An audit of accounts that are already subject to audit is a waste of money, and begs the question of what they are looking for. That makes it a fishing expedition, not a genuine audit. The information requests include job positions related to DEI, clean air, and carbon emissions. That tells you right there that they are on a witch hunt to eliminate what THEY don’t like. Here in Gainesville, we value diversity, we value clean air, and we want to slow climate change as much as we can.
This is not the first audit. Others have shown that our city government is responsible. Remember Gainesville has over 50% tax exempt properties with churches, schools and the University of Florida. If you want to lower property taxes, make churches and UF pay their fair share.
Florida would be well-served by a similar audit of DeSantis. He cloaks his management of the state in far more secrecy than any municipal government. Let’s see the details of HIS procurement practices, awards of grants (looking at you Casey) and management.
Exactly. Hope Florida. ‘Nough said.
Yes unfortunately, he will never release any details of his spending for obvious reasons.
ONCE THE LIGHTS ARE TURNED ON THE COCKROACHES RUN!!! CITY OF GNV AND ALACHUA CO HAVE BEEN RUNNING AMUCK FOR YEARS. THE FLORIDA CONSTITUTION PROHIBITS TAXATION OF REAL PROPERTY. ALACHUA CO LIB DISTRICT NEEDS DOGE’ING ALONG WITH IT. THESE POLITICAL SUBDIVISION HAVE BEEN SCRUTINIZED BECAUSE THEY ARE CORRUPT. WAKE UP TO THESE WOKE’D POLICIES. DOWN WITH THE DEMONCRATS, RINOS, SOC-COM MARKSIST RADICALS. GIVE ME LIBERTY WITH DESANTIS’ POLICY OR GIVE ME THE STRENGTH TO FIGHT THE OPPOSITION
You would have much more credibility if you provided some facts to support your shouted (USING ALL CAPS) comments. As it is, you’re nothing more than a shill for trump.
Wouldn’t the labor coalition want to see the spread of city pay and benefits from top to bottom? like $300,000++ and no pay freeze for a city manager who requires lots of high-paid assistance? but vacancies in basic public works and police? consultants getting millions? years of tax increases raising housing costs long before losing control of GRU? Guess not.
Gainesville Communist City Commission is far overdue for an audit. How can people here consistently forget that the Commission put Gainesville residents into nearly $2 BILLION DOLLARS OF DEBT for a wood burning power plant that we don’t even use because it costs too much to operate? And 20 years later we, as a community, still owe $1.7 Billion. (Read all the gorey details here: https://alachuachronicle.com/konish-how-gru-was-financially-ruined-by-a-failed-political-agenda/). If you think this was the start and end of their corrupt overspending, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Our Mayor is the UN Agenda 2030 representative for the ICLEI which pushes local governments to spend tax dollars on their globalist initiatives, rather than on our local concerns of roads in good repair, affordable utilities, and public safety with police that ACTUALLY ARREST PEOPLE AND DAs THAT ACTUALLY PROSECUTE CRIMINALS AND SEND THEM TO JAIL.
Property Taxes per capita have doubled since 2017. Why wouldn’t everyone want this investigated?
I couldn’t agree more about Florida property taxes and tax structure in general, but that responsibility lies with our GOP led Legislature. We could discuss all day how the County and City allocate funding to the various county/city services, but the source of the money, property taxes, is a State issue. And can they be trusted to do the honest thing? Remember how we were sold the lottery? All the money would go to education. That ended up being sort of true. The thing was/is an accounting trick to subtract state funding for all the lottery dollars so the net gain to education was 0 and the Legislature had a new source of money for their pet/favorite projects.