CFO: St. Pete owes property owners $49 million

St. Petersburg’s budget increased by nearly $133 million over the past six years despite the city gaining just 11,500 new residents, according to Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia.

Ingoglia held an impromptu press conference at The Birchwood restaurant Wednesday to admonish city officials for alleged financial misconduct. He said St. Petersburg has overtaxed residents by $49 million from 2019 through 2025 to support a bloated bureaucracy.

The 48% budget increase during that period equates to $46,228 “for every family of four that moved into the city.” Ingoglia repeatedly stated he was speaking on behalf of the Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight (FAFO) rather than the agency that audited St. Petersburg in August 2025, the state’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

“It’s concerning because government just thinks that you’re an ATM,” Ingoglia said. “Zero fiscal constraint, whatsoever. Government at all levels has a spending problem.”

Ingoglia, who oversees at least seven government agencies or divisions, said FAFO typically does not highlight the number of new city employees “because they all come in, relatively, around the same.” He believes St. Petersburg is an outlier.

Local officials are taking taxpayer dollars to grow governments, Ingoglia stressed, instead of funding “anything that you guys can see, touch and feel out in the community.” For example, St. Petersburg hired 371 people over the past six years, he said.

That “doesn’t make sense at all,” as only 65 of those hires were first responders. “The rest were absolutely nothing but bureaucrats and administrative personnel,” Ingoglia added.

He alleged that two mayoral administrations hired one new “bureaucrat” for every 38 additional residents. Officials overtaxed residents by 1.34 mills, Ingoglia said, and residents with a $400,000 home could have saved $535 annually.

“Government cannot grow faster than inflation and population, and if you do, then you have to refund the money back to the citizens,” Ingoglia said of his methodology. “Because you are growing government too quickly. It is considered the gold standard of holding governments accountable.”

Ingoglia, noting that FAFO is not DOGE, said he did not need to discern “granular details” when “basic math tells me” that most of the $49 million went to personnel costs. He was also unsure when St. Petersburg would receive its final audit report, which was due earlier this month.

City officials received the report hours after the private meeting. Mayor Ken Welch said in a prepared statement that they are working to verify Ingoglia’s assertions and encouraged residents with questions to review the city’s “transparent” budget and property tax information websites.

“Recent national events remind us of the harm that false and politically motivated statements can create,” Welch said. “The CFO’s claims are unsubstantiated and targeted to support the obvious political agenda of justifying property tax changes, regardless of the impacts on police and fire service delivery by local governments.

“We will continue to operate based on facts, not conjecture.”

Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia brought several visual aids to highlight purported fiscal overreach.

Welch also realizes that any government rebuttals could, if people heed Ingoglia’s warnings, fall on deaf ears. The chief financial officer warned attendees – mostly supporters and some media members – that local officials would use “scare tactics” and “every excuse in the book” to maintain “excessive and wasteful spending.”

City Council Chair Lisset Hanewicz recently noted that 97.5% of St. Petersburg property taxes fund the police and fire departments. When asked to reconcile that figure with previous statements, Ingoglia called it “a trick,” “spin” and “crap.”

He said visitors and residents help fund public safety budgets through sales taxes. Ingoglia also stressed that property tax relief and government accountability were non-partisan issues.

For example, he credited Orlando, a blue city, for overspending and overtaxing by $22 million in 2025, a “relatively small amount.” Conversely, Ingoglia admonished “deep red” Manatee County for misappropriating $112 million in public funding last year, “with a relatively small budget.”

Ingoglia, who is “here to call balls and strikes on behalf of the taxpayers,” said the 12 local governments he reviewed last year misspent $1.92 billion. He urged voters to help restore “fiscal sanity” at the ballot box in November.

“It is my hope that the Legislature comes up with something big, bold and aggressive that we can put on the ballot and fix the property tax system here in the State of Florida for decades to come,” Ingoglia said. “Band-aids will not suffice anymore.”