Six years into his tenure as one of the nation’s most conservative governors — if not the most tight-fisted penny pincher in the land— Gov. Ron DeSantis is dispatching his own crew of mission evaluators and operational auditors to squeeze every possible drop of performance efficiency and cost-cutting out of Florida government.

Maybe it’s just another step in the governor’s continuing effort to look Trumpier-than-thou among big-name Republicans. Perhaps he’s trying to build a legacy that his wife can carry into a 2026 campaign and keep the governor’s mansion in the family. He likely wants to produce some tangible fiscal results, stuff U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds and other potential GOP candidates can only talk about.

As if to underscore the devotion he has felt to President Donald Trump, ever since Trump whupped him last year for the Republican presidential nomination, DeSantis dubbed his anti-waste task force “DOGE” — like the Department of Government Efficiency frolicking through federal agency files and personnel rosters in Washington, D.C.

Of course it’s possible DeSantis, like Trump and Elon Musk, truly believes that government is inherently bloated, wasteful and full of fraud. That’s a GOP article of faith, an unquestioned truism which Republicans hold as sacred as Democrats’ deep commitment to nominating people who make them feel virtuous when they lose.

The facts of state personnel, however, don’t support the fat-government prejudice. In fact, the numbers contradict it.

Every year, the Florida Department of Management Services compiles a handy little compendium of facts and figures on state government. Year after year — even before the Republicans won complete control in 1998 — the agency’s workforce report has showed Florida 50th in the per-capita size and cost of state government.

Under the wild-eyed, tax-and-spend liberalism of governors like Jeb Bush, Charlie Crist, Rick Scott and DeSantis, the state might have done some things you haven’t liked. But at least it did them fairly well.

The most recent annual workforce report posted online by the Department of Management Services is for the 2021-2022 year. Another should be issued soon, but it won’t show a big change in the numbers.

For starters, the report said Florida had 97,218 established job positions. That was an increase of 355 jobs over the preceding five years. Wow, talk about your rampant, runaway growth.

The report said the state had 96 full- or part-time employees per 10,000 population — again, dead last in the country. The national average was 198 state workers per 10,000 population. Counting only full-time employees, the figure was 82 per 10,000 Florida residents — exactly half the national average.

The state payroll was, statistically, even stingier. The workforce report said payroll costs were $40 per resident, compared to a $90 national average.

But there’s much more to efficiency than just job positions and salaries.

At a news conference in Tampa, DeSantis said he wants the state’s new DOGE task force to find 70 state boards and commissions to abolish and about 900 positions to delete. State agencies will have their own efficiency teams, and universities will undergo independent examinations of their operations.

The state already has a Government Efficiency Task Force, created by a 2006 constitutional amendment. It’s required to meet every four years and recommend ways to run government better.

The state also has the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, or OPPAGA, which runs operational studies of various programs and state offices, and the Auditor General’s Office, which holds agencies accountable for spending money as legislative budget writers intend.

House and Senate committees also summon agency heads to justify budget requests and to explain themselves when things go wrong.

No one can be against government efficiency. The Center for American Political Studies at Harvard and The Harris Poll released a survey Feb. 24 indicating that 72% of registered voters who were polled online support the idea of a DOGE-like agency spotlighting government waste and poor operation. There’s no reason to doubt that the idea — if not for the tactics of the Trump-Musk operation — would poll just as highly in Florida.

In a $100 billion-plus operation like Florida government, the DeSantis-directed DOGE effort will probably find some dumb stuff — particularly some of the “diversity, equity and inclusion” things the Republicans love to hate — but it should also find that our state agencies do well overall.

Bill Cotterell is a retired state Capitol reporter for United Press International and the Tallahassee Democrat. He can be reached at .

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