T The last day of July 2025 was D-day for Florida's local governments. That was when the state's new Department of Government Efficiency, modeled on Elon Musk's federal DOGE, began descending on city halls and county administrative offices to audit spending as part of Governor Ron DeSantis's drive for "transparency and accountability in government." His administration dispatched two teams of fiscal specialists from Tallahassee"including experts from the Departments of Revenue, Financial Services, and Education"in what he called a "boots-on-the-ground" effort to rein in local government spending. To justify the campaign, DeSantis argued that, with Florida's growing prosperity, local governments were using revenue from rising tax receipts, especially property levies, to go on a "spending spree." The state DOGE's purpose, he said, was to find out what elected officials were doing with all that new money