Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves said Wednesday he is not planning to “go politically point for point” through a newly released state report that accuses the city of wasteful spending and ties some of its decisions to a broader debate over property taxes.
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“We got it the same time the public got it, like the last time," Reeves said at his weekly press briefing. "We’re not spending a whole lot of time on it. We spent 655 hours of staff time on it.”
The report, issued by Florida’s Department of Government Efficiency — a DeSantis administration initiative known as DOGE — summarizes a two-day site visit in August and argues that Pensacola’s property tax revenues nearly doubled since fiscal year 2016-17, while the city’s general fund spending grew more than 50% and population changed only modestly.
In one of the report’s most pointed sections, DOGE alleges the city’s contracted manager for the Saenger Theatre “scheduled a drag show to coincide with Christmas events for children” and lists “downtown drag shows at the Saenger Theater — including ‘A Drag Queen Christmas,’ among what it describes as “DEI examples.”
RELATED: Pensacola residents clash over Saenger Theatre drag show
Reeves, who has previously defended the city’s cooperation with the state’s review, said the city provided everything DOGE asked for.
“They have the right to conduct that report,” he said. “We gave them everything that they’ve asked for.”
But Reeves suggested the findings did not raise new concerns inside City Hall.
“I don’t think it seemed particularly new or different or anything that is any sense of alarm for us,” he said.
‘Not here to go politically point for point’
DOGE was launched by Gov. Ron DeSantis and allies as part of a high-profile campaign to spotlight local spending items that state officials label wasteful, often linking them to rising property tax bills. Supporters describe the effort as a necessary check on local government. Critics have cast it as a political project that singles out cultural and diversity-related programs.
In Pensacola, the report revisits earlier disputes over the city’s contract to manage the Saenger Theatre, a city-owned venue operated by a national booking company. State officials have cited the venue’s programming — including a touring drag show — and characterized a long-standing annual payment tied to the contract as evidence of questionable priorities. City officials have said that payment is an operating advance and have argued the theater has returned more than $1 million to the city over three years.
The DOGE report also alleges that staff turnover complicated the state’s review and that remaining leadership lacked knowledge of some past decisions.
Reeves disputes ‘population-only’ framing
Reeves said the report’s framing of property tax growth relative to population “leaves out a couple of important things.”
“Number one is, if you look at the largest property tax revenue generator, it’s commercial property,” he said. “If Amazon came and built a one billion dollar building here, it would be the single largest property tax purveyor into the city budget. However, no one lives there. Every employee could live somewhere else outside the city.”
Reeves also argued that Pensacola’s service demands do not track neatly with resident headcounts because the city functions as a regional hub with a downtown that draws visitors and workers from beyond its boundaries.
RELATED: Pensacola rebuts state ‘waste’ claims, cites Saenger profits and outside funding
“We’re a tourist city that has small city limit lines with a busy downtown,” he said. “It’s going to have a different set of demands than maybe a city with the same population located somewhere else.”
He added that Pensacola is “a small, 21-square-mile landmass city that has 55,000 people, but has certainly much more than that and acts much larger than that in many ways, with an airport and other things — that’s going to have an effect.”
What the DOGE report alleges
Beyond the Saenger debate, the DOGE report points to a range of other issues it says reflect excessive spending, including pay increases that it says could deepen pension pressures, consulting and recruiting costs, and what it describes as “questionable contracts,” including lobbying spending and the cost of updating Community Redevelopment Agency plans.
The report also claims that spending growth after fiscal year 2019-20 was driven in part by the Human Resources department as city leadership focused on “DEI initiatives,” which DOGE calls a “major diversion from core human resources activities.”
Reeves did not address those line items individually on Wednesday, saying the city’s time and attention are better directed elsewhere.
“We’ve got too many important things,” he said.
Still, Reeves said he stands behind the principle DOGE officials say they are pursuing.
“I certainly stand by us being stewards of taxpayer dollars and operating those taxpayer dollars the way you would expect if you were operating a business — being as efficient as possible and being as smart and getting a bigger return on investment as possible,” he said.
For now, Reeves said the report does not change how the city plans to operate.
“We’re going to continue to run the city the best way that we can,” he said.
