End Wasteful Spending
Are you aware of how much of your tax dollars are wasted by Hillsborough County government? Probably not, because who has time to comb through an 850-page, $7.5 billion budget? Well, I took the time, and I’m here to tell you the county’s overspending is outrageous.
Our county commissioners keep saying “we’re broke,” yet we apparently have enough money available to spend millions of tax dollars on pet projects and giveaways to the commissioners’ wealthy friends and campaign supporters.
Here is just a small sample of the insane overspending I’ve uncovered:
- We’re subsidizing the Straz Center to the tune of $25 million, while it was never mentioned that the commissioner who pushed this funding used to serve as a trustee for the center and has received dozens of campaign contributions from their board members.
- County commissioners make $120,000 per year for a part time job, plus they’re guaranteed automatic 3% raises every year thanks to the first vote my opponent, Kimberly Overman, ever took as a county commissioner.
- 26 years later, we’re still paying for the Tampa Bay Bucs’ stadium, and we’re giving them millions of dollars per year for operational costs, yet the team owners have enough money to go buy the Manchester United soccer team in England.
- We’re going to spend $50 million on a ferry that will do nothing to relieve traffic.
- The county just spent $7 million on astroturf, $14 million on new software, and $9 million for “splash pads,” yet we don’t have functional roads to get our kids to school.
- We pay the county administrator over $300,000 per year while the average family in the county makes 1/6 that.
- The county bought the most expensive Oracle ERP platform instead of a more fiscally responsible alternative that could do the job just as well.
- We pay 4000-5000 office workers in the “pink palace,” not a single one of whom missed a paycheck during the pandemic while the county told the rest of us we weren’t “essential personnel” and had to stay home.
- The county spent $1 million for a new building plus hundreds of thousands of dollars per year on a social equity taskforce to control development in the county.
If we don’t do something to stop this wasteful spending, it’s only going to get worse. The City of Tampa Bay is lobbying the county to impose an additional countywide 5 cent gas tax to bail out the city’s mismanaged budget and fix their roads, and the Tampa Bay Rays are aggressively lobbying the county behind the scenes for hundreds of millions of tax dollars.
I’m running for Hillsborough County Commissioner to bring accountability and transparency to our county government. I will stop this unsustainable wasteful spending.
I’m the “boring budget guy.” I’m not a politician—I’m just a regular guy who focuses on getting the job done, like I did in the Navy during Operation Enduring Freedom, when I came home and rehabilitated the finances of a struggling family-owned manufacturing company, and as I’ve started and operated my own small business.
I will use my business experience and lean operations background to give taxpayers a voice on the county board. I will create financial transparency so the public can see exactly where their tax dollars are being spent and can hold their government accountable. I will audit the county’s spending, put a stop to backroom deals, and cut fat from the budget. And I will streamline operations and make our county operate fiscally responsibly.
