TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed Florida’s own Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force on Monday intending to reduce waste to save taxpayers money.

DeSantis proposed getting rid of at least 700 state jobs, but hiring more law enforcement and jail staff.

He also wants to eliminate dozens of state boards that employ hundreds of people. DeSantis claims many have not met for years.

“We look to see what Musk is doing with the DOGE in Washington D.C., and the one thing I think that they’re doing that we need to incorporate is to utilize and leverage technology like artificial intelligence to be able to police the payments and the operations and the contracts that are done in government,” the governor said in a Monday press conference.

In the governor’s executive order establishing Florida’s own DOGE initiative, he said each state agency would set up its own team to eliminate spending and fall in line with the president’s DOGE efforts. The teams will report every month to the executive task force until at least next year when the order is set to expire.

WCTV reached out to AFSCME, a union representing many state workers nationwide. They stopped representing Florida state employees in 2023 after a new law was passed on how union dues can be collected.

When WCTV asked who represented state employees now, the union said nobody.

According to the Department of Management Services website, there are a handful of bargaining units representing state employees – most are for health professionals and first responders.

Florida politics:

The announcement from DeSantis comes on the heels of an email ordered by Elon Musk over the weekend that left federal workers scrambling. The mass email sent Saturday demanded federal employees provide five bullet points detailing what they accomplished on their jobs last week.

The email asked “What did you do last week,” with a deadline of midnight Monday.

On X, formerly known as Twitter, Elon Musk said failure to respond would be taken as a resignation. But some federal agencies, like the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, are urging their employees not to reply.

Musk and the Trump administration have claimed they’ve found billions of dollars of fraud with federal paychecks, but have not provided evidence for the claims.

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