Florida CFO race heats up as Taddeo accuses Ingoglia of failing taxpayers

The state's Chief Financial Officer isn't a particularly glamorous or high-profile position. The job of the CFO is to ensure state dollars go where they are supposed to go. The CFO is required to perform audits, especially when the Governor uses no-bid contracts. And he has the power to investigate fraud by insurance companies.

In July 2025, Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Blaise Ingoglia to the position after the former CFO, Jimmy Patronis, was elected to Congress.

Ingoglia was one of DeSantis's closest and most loyal allies in the Florida Senate. And since being appointed, Ingoglia has traveled in lockstep with the Governor.

The one time Ingoglia tried to differ with the Governor, the Governor publicly slapped him down.

It was September 30, 2025, and the Florida Cabinet was meeting to consider several items, including the purchase of land in Destin. The four acres of land were slated to be purchased by the state for $83 million – more than $20 million an acre – and an unheard-of asking price for land in that area.

The seller was a major campaign contributor who had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to DeSantis and Republicans in Florida. When the item came up in the Cabinet meeting, it was bundled with three other land deals. Ingoglia requested that the deal in Destin be voted on separately so he could vote against it.

"I'd like to be shown as a no on item 4F," Ingoglia said, referring to the $83 million land deal.

But DeSantis was having none of it.

"You're either a yes or a no on the vote," DeSantis said with a laugh.

"I don't know if there is another way to do it procedurally, I would be yes for all of them except for 4F," Ingoglia replied.

Asking for a controversial item to be taken up separately is not unusual and could have been easily accommodated. But again, DeSantis refused to even consider it.

"Okay, well, they are bundled, so I'll take that as a yes, and your objection is noted on that one," DeSantis said, steamrolling over Ingoglia.

Ingoglia sat back and remained silent as the Cabinet moved on.

Ingoglia is up for election in November, and his opponent, Democrat Annette Taddeo, said the state CFO acts more like a lapdog for DeSantis than a watchdog for the public.

"We need to make sure that we have somebody that's looking out for taxpayers, that is the true watchdog, an independent position that looks at everything and everybody regardless of party," Taddeo said during an interview with CBS Miami's Jim DeFede for Sunday's Facing South Florida.

A spokesman for Ingoglia's campaign said he was too busy to do an interview.

Since being appointed by DeSantis, Ingoglia has traveled around the state, holding press conferences in which he criticizes a city or county for what he calls "excessive, wasteful spending."

Holding up cardboard signs his staff created, he accuses individual cities and counties of "wasting" tens of millions, and in some cases hundreds of millions of dollars.

But the figures he uses do not come from any actual audits. Instead, he made up his own formula that he claims to use but refuses to provide the actual numbers he plugs into it, so that the various cities and counties could refute them.

For nearly a year, Ingoglia has been promising to release reports on the spending in each of these cities and counties, but he has failed to do so.

Critics argued his myriad press conferences touting wasteful spending were just a publicity stunt designed to get headlines.

Taddeo said the public deserves an actual CFO rooting out waste and not some "cos play" CFO "who's pretending to do the job."

"If you really want to go after fraud and abuse, it's right under his nose at the state level," she said.

Taddeo argued Ingoglia should be investigating how DeSantis spent more than $1.2 billion on Alligator Alcatraz in no-bid contracts or the way insurance companies hide their profits in the state.

Taddeo, however, said Ingoglia is unwilling to stand up to DeSantis.

"We have someone who's not looking out for Floridians," she said, "who's not standing up to the insurance companies, is not auditing the books the way it's required by law, not following the money, not doing investigations on all the different things that we should be doing."