JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A Jacksonville councilman introduced a resolution on Monday to request Gov. Ron DeSantis and his recently established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force conduct a financial audit of the City of Jacksonville.
Councilman Terrance Freeman filed the resolution to express the city council’s support of DeSantis’ DOGE team and voluntarily request a review of the city’s finances.
“This is a common sense ask right here of the governor of a resolution to volunteer,” Freeman said. “Hillsborough County has done it; Bay County is doing it. Every elected official, we try to manage taxpayer dollars like we manage our own checkbooks and when we do our check. But when we manage our checkbooks, we balance it, and we go line by line, and we try to figure out where we’re spending our money. That’s what DOGE simply does.”
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In February, DeSantis introduced the DOGE task force, which was created to review and improve the state government’s efficiency by helping streamline the Florida government and “eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy.”
The @CityofJax should embrace every effort to promote transparency & fiscal responsibility. In addition to the great work of my colleagues and the auditors, @GovRonDeSantis has asked ALL 67 counties to voluntarily opt in to the state’s new independent DOGE program. Let’s not play… https://t.co/pGzd7TqYct
— Terrance Freeman (@TFreemanJax) April 7, 2025
It does call for auditing local governments.
In a press release, DeSantis’ office said: “State task force will look into local government expenditures by utilizing publicly available county and municipal spending records to expose bloat within local governance.”
Given the individual and sometimes complicated needs of multiple different cities throughout Florida, News4JAX asked Freeman if having the state come in posed an inadvertent risk of those individual needs being overlooked.
“We’re simply now adding the state level in,” Freeman said. “So, when you talk about outsiders coming in, when they find something, if they find something, they’re going to make a recommendation. It still comes back to the council. It still comes back to the citizens for their say in public comment, their say in public hearings.”
News4JAX reached out to Mayor Donna Deegan’s office regarding the resolution and responded with the following statement:
“It seems Councilman Freeman missed the memo that his colleagues are already hiring an independent external auditor, an annual process that is outlined in the City Charter. It’s hard to understand why he wants to waste taxpayer resources on duplicating this effort,” a spokesperson for the mayor’s office said.
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When asked to respond to the mayor’s response, Freeman acknowledged the external auditor. He said again that this resolution is about transparency.
“It is Duval DOGE, we have external auditors that we do every year, and now we’re asking the Florida DOGE to come in and look at it,” Freeman said. “That’s three layers of transparency. So, my question to anybody that responds to this is, what problem do they have with transparency, especially those that campaigned on it? Especially those that have really championed letting the sunshine in, letting the sunlight in, what problems would they have with it?”
Freeman also commended the work of Councilman Ron Salem and the “Duval DOGE” special committee, which has been conducting its own in-depth review of city spending. The special committee for Duval DOGE is required to hand over its final report by late June.
