Politics
Alex Sink says Florida CFOs have been derelict in their duty to taxpayers for a decade
Former CFO Alex Sink says most of the people who succeeded her in the job have neglected their responsibility to taxpayers, but fellow Democrat Annette Taddeo will break that cycle.
Appearing with Taddeo in a virtual press conference, Sink said the CFO’s responsibility is to look out for taxpayers’ money and hold Tallahassee politicians responsible for their spending.
“For the last 10 years, the people of Florida have not had a Chief Financial Officer doing his job,” she said.
“The CFO has … enormous power to be able to hold things up to investigate, and we’ve seen so many abuses in these past years. And we truly need that independent voice, and that’s why I think (Florida’s independent voters) broke to support me (and are) going to break to support Annette Taddeo, because they know when these abuses are in their face that Annette Taddeo as CFO, she’s going to investigate.”
Sink, who was the last Democrat to win and serve as CFO from 2007 to 2011, rattled off a list of recent scandals she said fall within the CFO’s purview, including the misappropriation of funds through First Lady Casey DeSantis’ Hope Florida nonprofit and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ migrant flights program to the more than $1 billion his administration spent on the now-shuttered Alligator Alcatraz immigration detention center with no guarantee of a federal reimbursement.
Preceding those divisive matters and still persisting, Sink said, is the issue of disproportionately high property insurance rates Floridians pay — an issue that insurers attributed to losing money to provide coverage, while transferring millions to out-of-state operations to hide their profits.
“This has been a scam for decades, of the insurance companies passing their profits up to separate entities so that then they can come back and cry and say that they’re not making enough money and they need rate increases and they need different laws,” Sink said.
“Annette served on the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee in Florida. She knows firsthand, from a legislative perspective, what goes on, what the issues are, and I truly believe that this is the time that independent-minded voters and the people of Florida are ready for a change and they are ready for somebody who can hold the Governor — whoever he might be — the Cabinet and the rest of the legislators accountable for the dollars that we’re spending.”
Taddeo, who is running to unseat appointed Republican CFO Blaise Ingoglia, a past Florida GOP Chair, is statistically tied with the incumbent, according to internal and external polling of the race. That’s despite voters’ general unfamiliarity with both candidates and a significant funding disadvantage.
Ingoglia, who previously served in the Senate and was among DeSantis’ top allies in the chamber, took over the post in July 2025 — weeks after Alligator Alcatraz opened, months after the Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald broke the Hope Florida story, and years after the Governor’s migrant flights began.
Florida’s insurance crisis has persisted for years, prompting legislative action last year to curb the issue that has since led to rate reductions for thousands of policyholders.
While the Legislature has focused on the insurance issue, Ingoglia has focused much of his efforts on calling out local governments for overspending, including Taddeo’s home county of Miami-Dade, which he said unnecessarily spent $470 million in the past fiscal year alone.
He’s made similar claims about Hillsborough County, Manatee County, Nassau County, Orange County, Osceola County, Palm Beach County, Fort Pierce and Miami, among others.
DeSantis has cited Ingoglia’s findings to support a proposed constitutional amendment this year that would significantly raise homestead exemptions on property taxes and lead to significant shortfalls in local budgets.
Ingoglia has also overseen several measurable gains at the Department of Financial Services. The agency’s Division of Unclaimed Property returned more than $847 million to Floridians, including record monthly distributions of $88 million in February and $92 million in March. As State Fire Marshal, he awarded more than $48 million to Fire Departments for equipment, emergency-response improvements and protection from cancer-causing contaminants.
His Department also reported 1,219 arrests and $38 million in court-ordered restitution through its Criminal Investigations Division, while Ingoglia backed more than $2 million in penalties against eight insurers over claims-handling violations following hurricanes Ian and Idalia.
Taddeo, a past Chair of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party who previously ran for Congress and County Clerk, noted that polling has shown her and Ingoglia neck-and-neck with roughly 40% support for each of them. With Republicans holding a 1.55 million voter advantage over Democrats, much of Taddeo’s score comes from the support of no-party voters — the same as it was for Sink when she defeated Republican Tom Lee by 7 percentage points in November 2006.
“Twenty years ago, she did what we are about to do this year,” she said. “Same office, same time of years, same independent voters.”
Sink’s criticism of a lack of oversight by CFOs was aimed at Ingoglia and his predecessor, Jimmy Patronis, who left the job for a seat in Congress last April. It did not, apparently, extend to her immediate successor, Jeff Atwater, who won the post after Sink forwent re-election to run for Governor in 2010.
Like Ingoglia, Patronis initially took the CFO job by appointment, when then-Gov. Rick Scott tapped him after Atwater resigned to serve as CFO of Florida Atlantic University, where he still works.
Election Day is Nov. 3.
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