Feb. 24 (UPI) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Monday a new state program, modeled after the federal government’s Department of Government Efficiency, to eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse.”
“I’m excited about this effort to take some of what we’ve seen in Washington that they’re doing with Elon Musk and apply it to Florida,” DeSantis told reporters in Tampa.
The one-year plan calls for cutting 900 positions, in addition to 70 state boards and commissions. It will also require state universities to undergo independent reviews and audits to track spending, especially for Diversity, Equality and Inclusion programs and classes that are deemed “unnecessary.”
The governor also called for reviews of local, city and county budgets, by using advanced technology and artificial intelligence to identify unnecessary spending and contracts.
“I think taxpayers need to have a seat at the table in Washington and for too long, nobody has cared about the taxpayers and the next generation that is ultimately going to have to pay for this mismanagement that we have seen over these many years,” DeSantis added.
A Government Efficiency Task Force was approved by Florida voters in 2006 as part of a state constitutional amendment. The group “is required to meet every four years for the purpose of developing recommendations to improve governmental operations and reduce costs.”
Democratic Orlando state Rep. Anna Eskamani blasted DeSantis on Monday, as well as the creation of the Florida DOGE Task Force.
“The problems are the fact that we have a broken unemployment system, that we don’t have regulation of insurance companies and their predatory and fraudulent behavior, so there’s a lot of areas where we could cut costs,” Eskamani said as she claimed, “Unfortunately, a lot of it is created by Gov. Ron DeSantis.”
The Governor’s DOGE Task Force would only operate for one year and would end in 2026, as DeSantis prepares to leave his second and final term in office.
“Today, we are formalizing a Florida DOGE task force to go even further,” DeSantis wrote Monday in a post on X. “Federal DOGE efforts have demonstrated the power of cutting edge technology, and I look forward to Florida’s DOGE task force doing even more for taxpayers.”
In just one month since President Trump’s inauguration, DOGE has exposed wasteful spending, tackled the entrenched bureaucracy, and challenged the way the federal government operates. We’ve been doing these things in Florida since I took office, but today, we are formalizing a… pic.twitter.com/Dnxof9eva8— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) February 24, 2025
