Transparency Theater Is Not Reform
Florida does not have an oversight problem. Florida has an accountability problem. And those two things are not the same.
The Chief Financial Officer is already mandated by statute to conduct audits of state and local government spending. That authority is not new. The tools are not new. The power to identify improper payments, mismanagement, or misuse of funds already exists inside the Department of Financial Services. Which raises a simple and uncomfortable question. What exactly does this new DOGE initiative do that the CFO could not already do yesterday.
The honest answer is nothing.
DOGE does not expand authority. It does not create new enforcement mechanisms. It does not provide additional teeth to recover taxpayer dollars. What it does provide is optics. Press conferences. County by county tours. Broad accusations wrapped in the language of transparency. In an election year, that distinction matters.
If this initiative were about real reform, Floridians would already see tangible outcomes. Recovered funds. Clawbacks. Referrals to law enforcement. Administrative penalties. Personnel changes. Instead, what we see are sweeping claims of fraud, waste, and abuse with no meaningful follow through. Oversight without consequences is not oversight at all. It is noise.
Even more troubling is the way local governments are being portrayed. Taxpayers already know how their counties and municipalities spend money. Budgets are public. Meetings are public. Elections are public. In many cases, voters directly approved the spending through referendums or elected the officials who authorized it. Pretending that these expenditures are shocking revelations insults the intelligence of the electorate.
What Tallahassee routinely fails to appreciate is context. Local conditions matter. Emergency declarations matter. Infrastructure failures matter. Storm response matters. Timing matters. Labeling expenditures as fraud, waste, or abuse without understanding who approved the spending, why it was approved, and under what circumstances it occurred is reckless governance. It replaces analysis with accusation.
This kind of top down finger pointing also ignores a basic truth of government. State officials are often far removed from the realities on the ground. What looks inefficient from a spreadsheet in Tallahassee may have been necessary, urgent, or unavoidable at the local level. Oversight requires curiosity and competence, not just a microphone.
Ironically, if there is fraud, waste, and abuse on display, it may be this very exercise. Spending taxpayer dollars on political grandstanding instead of using existing audit authority to conduct real examinations, recover real money, and impose real consequences is the definition of waste. Transparency tours do not fix problems. Enforcement does.
Florida deserves better than branding masquerading as reform. Transparency without accountability is meaningless. Accountability without enforcement is hollow. As CFO, my focus will not be on press releases or traveling roadshows. It will be on outcomes. Real audits. Real recoveries. Real consequences. That is how you protect taxpayers. That is how you restore trust.
