“Florida has set the standard for fiscally conservative governance, and our new Florida DOGE task force will do even more to serve the people of Florida,” DeSantis said in a press release.
More specifically, the task force will serve a one-year term to “eliminate redundant boards and commissions, review state university and college operations and spending, utilize artificial intelligence to further examine state agencies to uncover hidden waste and audit the spending habits of local entities to shine the light on waste and bloat.”
Since taking office in 2019, Gov. DeSantis has worked to cut the size of the state government by eliminating boards, lifting regulations, cutting down on spending — saving approximately $3.5 billion last year — paying down state debt by 41 percent and increasing rainy-day funds by more than $9.4 billion, according to the statement.
The governor’s goals for the Florida DOGE Task Force are to:
- Eliminate an additional 70 boards and commissions in 2025
- Conduct a deep dive into all college and university operations and spending to make recommendations to the Board of Governors and State Board of Education to eliminate any wasteful spending
- Use AI to supplement ongoing efforts to review operations within state agencies and identify more ways to cut unnecessary spending and eliminate bureaucracy
- Examine local government expenditures via publicly available county and municipal spending records to expose “bloat” within local governance
- Save taxpayers’ money by returning unused or surplus federal dollars allocated to the state
