Fiscal Rangers

Why Government Agencies Need Strong Spending Controls

Arizona school district dropped employee credit card spending reviews of invoices under $2000, and got cought by local TV station public records request. Read more →

Far Reach Ranch 2500 home development has first public meeting

A huge new 2500 home "Far Reach Ranch" residential and commercial development is planned in Tavares, FL and this is the first of several posts on the development proposal and approvals by the City of Tavares, FL. Residents are concerned about many issues, including traffic gridlock, school class capacity, raised taxes for existing Tavares homeowners to subsidize needed infrastructure, etc. Read more →

About Vivek & Elon's DOGE or Dept. of Government Efficiency and how to apply

Here is the new, official X account for Vivek and Elon's DOGE or Department of Government Efficiency, and how to apply for a job. Read more →

Challenger Tom Vail has many endorsements for Lake County, FL Supv. of Elections

Tom Vail, who we endorse, is running for the Lake County FL Superintendant of Elections and this is his list of endorsements so far. Read more →

Tavares, FL holds update for Tavares Planning & Zoning Comm - Apr. 18, 2024

This Apr. 18, 2024, 65-minute meeting video was not a regular Tavares, FL P&Z meeting, but an apparent annual update for the P&Z Committee on Tavares commercial and residential developments, a good overview of the Planning profession history, and an overview of the Florida Live Local Act. They also provided large maps (see attachments) of pending residential and commercial developments and discussed them.  Read more →

FL House Dist 26 Candidates Addie Owens & Mike Levine on Video

Lake County, FL Republican Residents in North-West Lake County need to know who is best for them by watching this video.  These are the two leading candidates in the elections for FL House Dist 26, 2024. Read more →

Texas Election Integrity voters combine efforts, plan big TX Legislators full day briefing on Jan. 24

Conservative Texas vlogger Debbie Georgatos of AmericaCanWeTalk.com had a great video segment on Rumble on Jan. 12, 2023, explaining a growing TexasFirst.org movement to uncover and document election integrity issues and get legislative changes to improve election integrity. Read about the event and get the links here. Read more →

Updated Jan 15, 2023: Jan. 9, - Lake County, FL Legislators' Delegation meeting in Leesburg - video uploaded and link added

Updated Jan 15, 2023: The video links were added for this meeting for the Monday, Jan. 9, 2023, Lake County FL Legislative Delegation, which is the four FL legislators representing Lake County, FL and they will decide on a local law about Rural Protection Areas, as well as listen to 35+ citizens, agency reps and community groups asking for support or funding for their projects or issues. Read more →

Two Lake County, FL Election Hob Nobs hold election straw polls this week in Clermont & Leesburg

Tomorrow, Monday, Aug. 8th, 2022 and on Tuesday, Aug. 9th, there are two election "Hob Nobs" run by local Chambers of Commerce to let the public meet and greet all local election candidates and to vote for them in a straw poll that is administered by the Lake County Supv. of Elections. We provide details and encourage Lake County, FL voters to attend and "vote" in a straw poll to support their favored candidates. Read more →

Laura Loomer, candidate for US House Florida Dist. 11 - Meet & Greet, July 25, 2022 in Clermont, FL

Candidate Laura Loomer, running against incumbent Daniel Webster for US Congress District 11 (mostly Lake County, FL) gave a rousing speech during her Meet & Greet event at Clermont's River Church on July 25, 2022. We missed the first 10 minutes, but there were many standing ovations for the points she focuses on, such as the incumbent's low voting attendance records, lack of support of Donald Trump, etc. In my opinion, one failure of Webster was to vote for billions to be sent to the Ukraine, which was bad enough, but then there was no oversight requirement, thus corruption will run rampant over all the equipment sent to the Ukraine. Vance Jochim [email protected] Read more →

Florida US House Dist. 11 Candidate Laura Loomer is having an open house in Leesburg

Laura Loomer, candidate for the Florida US Congressional Dist. 11 (mosly Lake County and nearby county areas) is having an open house in Leesburg, Tue. July 26. Read the details and flyer here! Read more →

Is your County Supervisor of Elections Intelligent Enough to Prevent Phishing attempts to get office logins?

Election thieves are targeting Superintendents of Elections and employees with fake emails in phishing attempts to get their office login info. Are Florida SOEs smart enough to prevent their logins being hijacked? This article explains it and the notice sent out by the FBI warning them. And, HERE is the official FBI notice to SOE's. The question is, is your Florida SOE and staff intelligent enough to avoid such phishing attempts to get their password? In my opinion, as a retired information systems auditor and anti-corruption manager, I personally do not think so. Vance Jochim FiscalRangers.com [email protected] Apr. 4, 2022 Read more →

Florida 2020 voter registration database analysis shows questionable fluctuations. Did ERIC Cause it?

2020 Florida voter registration analysis and questionable fluctuations in different party registration volumes are shown in this 10-minute video of the Florida statewide voter registration database. Also, could there be a pattern of fake registrations? Speculation is that Florida's membership in "ERIC" may be the reason. Go to the Rumble channel to see the 10 minute video. Vance Jochim FiscalRangers.com Read more →

We interview Tom Vail about apparent manipulation of Florida Voter Registrations and Vote Counts

We interviewed Tom Vail, a vote integrity activist in Lake County, FL about evidence uncovered from analysis of Florida's 2020 elections vote dtabase (15-million voters) and suspicious trends found in voter registration data as well as mysterious appearance of Democrat and NPA registrations to match Republican counts. Then there was the database analysis showing ALL Florida addressses where more than 10 voters were registered, with some having 9000 or more registered voters to a single adddress. FAKE???? Read more →

Lake County, FL School Parents Alert: The School Board will review and approve several new math "instructional materials" (aka textbooks, etc.) on Feb. 28 - You need to comment

Lake County, FL School Parents Alert: The School Board will review and approve several new math "instructional materials" (aka textbooks, etc.) on Feb. 28 - You need to comment. Read more →

Police Chief & Two others "mis-appropriate" $80,000 from tiny city in Oklahoma

Elected government officials can learn from reported cases of fraud in local government. This link is to a story where a police chief and two others in the small town of Tryon, OK, population 500, embezzled over $80,000 over several years. The city's total annual budget was about $200,000. One lesson is that the elected officials apparently didn't exercise any type of oversight on the spending. "Oklahoma State Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd released her audit of the town of Tryon, between Stillwater and Chandler, on Thursday. She identified a total of $95,000 in misappropriated town funds via unauthorized and personal charges, according to a news release." Funds were withdrawn from city accounts via local casinos "In her audit, Byrd faulted not only the employees who benefited from the misappropriations but also the governing board for the town." "This "Town" Board was just asleep at the wheel." The Police Chief, Jered Pricket, is alleged to have made most of the personal transactions, including $3,700 in "questionable credit card expenditures," including deer hunting supplies. The "misappropriation" was 13% of Tryon's annual budget. “Donations made to the Tryon Police Department, totaling $3,960, were not deposited into the Town’s bank account,” Byrd wrote... Read more →

Leesburg, FL Residents: Two upcoming meetings you need to know about

Two Leesburg, FL City Council meetings are coming up (Dec. 30, 2021 & Jan. 3, 2022) without any details on their purpose. Both may include discussions relatedd to rampant development annexations by the City Council of Leesburg without regard to traffic gridlock that may result. As of Dec. 27, 2021, there is no online agenda for the Jan. 3rd meeting, and the Dec. 30 agenda only says each side will give presentations. Read more →

Updated! Tavares City Council denied a proposed SIXTY FOOT HIGH apartment building at HWY 19 & Lane Park Cutoff

The City of Tavares, FL is planning to approve (maybe) a (A) government warehouse development that would be removed from the Tavares property tax rolls, and (B) a humongous SIXTY FOOT HIGH 165 unit apartment complex that will generate almost 1000 road trips a day when the Highway 19 is at 98% of road "volume capacity". BOTH projects would MODIFY the existing zoning and density standards for the area along Highway 19. Read more →

Tell your Tavares, FL City Council members to allow citizen input at FIRST Readings of Planning & Zoning items

The City Council of Tavares, FL does not allow citizens to provide public input on "First Readings" of agenda items on Planning & Zoning or other issues, thus they cannot provide input until the next meeting and the FINAL "Second Reading". No other city in Lake County has this restriction, so citizens should demand that public input be accepted at First Readings. Read more →

Seven Issues Needing Attention by the Lake County, FL Legislative Delegation - presented Oct. 6, 2021

Yesterday, Oct. 7, 2021, the five member Lake County, FL State Legislative Delegation met in Leesburg, FL to hear requests for action and concerns from the public and local agencies. Over 50 people, representing themselves or organizations spoke for 3-minutes each before FL Senators Dennis Baxley (chair of the event) & Kellie Stargel, plus House Reps Anthony Sabatini, Keith Truenow, and Brett Hage. Many speakers also sent documents to support their pitches which were given to the panel in 3-ring binders. You can also visit the legislative member's local office and probably be able to review their copy of the binder (call first). Here is the initial list of the first 50 speakers and their topics prepared by Aline Guy in Rep. Keith Truenow's office. About 4-5 were no-shows, and about 3-4 were walk-ins (not on the agenda) and signed up to talk. Download 2021 Lake County Legislative Delegation AGENDA You can view the video of the entire event by Sunday, Oct. 10 at my YouTube "FiscalRangersFlorida" channel. I will post the specific link here when I have it uploaded. You can link to specific sections or use extracts as long as you credit the source link and give credit... Read more →

Our video of Col. Phil Waldron, cybersecurity and election fraud expert at Conservative Watch, USA Apr. 28, 2021

The video of the recent Conservative Watch USA-Villages April 28, 2021 meeting featuring Election fraud and cybersecurity expert Col Phil Waldron was uploaded at: https://youtu.be/AWq4f-3UKaM About the speaker, Col. Phil Waldron, Cybersecurity and Elections Integrity and fraud prevention expert: Colonel Phil Waldron(Retired) served in the US Army for 30 years and is a decorated combat veteran with extensive experience in Surveillance and Reconnaissance; Strategic Communications; Joint Information Operations; Cyber/Computer Network Operations; OPSEC; All -Source Intelligence Analysis; Unconventional Warfare and Operations Integration. He is most well known by the public for his recent testimony regarding the foreign and domestic interference in our election used by the Dominion Voting Machines that he presented at a hearing in front of the Arizona legislature defending President Donald J. Trump. Video by Vance Jochim of FiscalRangers.com Read more →

Why Tavares, FL Taxpayers Don't get all the details on City Council decisions

The City of Tavares, Florida's City Council met yesterday, April 7, 2021. We describe how they are leaving important details related to Council decisions out of the online agenda packet, and they need to provide that online in the future. This is one of several Tavares practices that result in lower transparency than other Lake County, FL cities. Read more →

Recall Florida is a new group focused on passing Florida legislation to allow Recalls of corrupt LOCAL City & County Officials

Florida statutes only allow citizens in 20 cities and counties to initiate recalls of corrupt local officials. A new group, RecallFlorida.com, is pushing 2021 Florida bills to correct that and allow citizens in ALL Florida cities and counties to recall corrupt local officials. Read more →

Lake County, FL has no public law library when most other Florida counties have one

The Lake County, FL Board of County Commissioners needs to refund and re-implement a public Law Library for residents like most other Florida counties have. Read more →

REDUCE YOUR Lake County, FL Property Taxes by 50% by buying property in a low tax Lake County city

Buyers of residential, rental or commercial property in Lake County, FL can SAVE 50% on property taxes if they pick the right, low millage rate city in Lake County. This article describes the 2020 millage rates for all 14 cities plus the unincorporated Lake County areas so you can decide to buy in a LOW or HIGH property tax location. Read more →

Tavares, FL City Council to finally start making videos of meetings

Tavares, FL City Council to finally start making videos of meetings Read more →

Lady Lake FL Town Commissioners cut trash runs to only 1, hear PACE financing program, discuss drones and building heights

The Town Commissioners of Lady Lake, FL had two meetings on Oct. 19, 2020 and FiscalRangers.com wrote an overview and made a video of the meeting. Read more →

Is Your Lake County City FAILING to provide VIDEOS of tax decision meetings, hiding their decisions?

City Councils in Lake County, FL are RAISING taxes while claiming credit for reducing tax RATES. The problem is property valuations are leaping, and multiply them by barely reduced millage tax rates equals TAX INCREASES. We discuss this manipulation of public information by elected officials. Read more →

How Lake County, FL elected officials are flimflamming property taxpayers

A commentary in the Orlando Sentinel blasted most local City Councils and the County Board for trying to say they reduced property tax millage rates, but since they did not reduce them to the rollback rate, total actual taxes will go up significantly once those officials vote in September to NOT approve rollback rates. Confusing? Yes, so read my article and the linked commentary by Lauren Ritchie. Read more →

Clermont, FL Taxpayers protest City Council decisions and rampant development at City Hall

Citizens showed up at the Clermont City Hall on July 22, 2020 to wave signs and discuss issues with those passing by. Led by local Clermont watchdog Dani Page, the group waved signs for two hours. This is a 30 minute segment. Read more →

Lake County, FL School Board member should reimburse two candidates over $2000 each for last minute decision to run for re-election

An incumbent on the Lake County, FL School Board had announced months ago that she was relocating and would not run for re-election this year. Thus two candidates filed for the position and spent over $2400 each on their campaigns, THEN at the last minute, Burns filed to run again, and stay here. Our opinion is this last-minute flip in position is unethical unless Burns at least reimburses each candidate for their spending. Burns has not collected or spent anything yet on her campaign. Read more →

Liberty County, FL Supt. of Elections suspended by FL Gov. Ron DeSantis due to $40k fraud

The FL Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended an elected Supt. of Elections in tiny Liberty County, FL (near Tallahassee) for an alleged $40 in fraud (not voter or election fraud) AND Google search has suppressed finding any articles or news about it if you use their search engine. But, Bing found many recent articles. See my updates also. Read more →

Orlando Sentinel's Scott Maxwell asks that voters monitor LOCAL elections as much as National elections

Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell encouraged taxpayers to attend local city council and other local agency meetings to monitor what they are doing, and also monitor who are the best candidates for their local government agencies. Here are my additional ideas for reform of City Councils and policies. Read more →

Florida Government Misanagement Results in Excessive $7+million CEO income for taxpayer funded non-profit after contract abuse found

A small non-profit that received Florida taxpayer funds, the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence (FCADV), refused to disclose spending documents for over a year. Then it was found they paid REALLY excessive income to the CEO, leading to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis initiating reforms and requiring reviews and oversights over ALL non-profits receiving Florida taxpayer funding. Read more →

The non-profit domain name .org is being sold to a private equity firm controlled by apparent middle eastern managers

A South African equity capital firm may be buying the non-profit firm that controls .org internet domain addresses, which could lead to increased fees or censorship, since many leaders in the firm have Arabic names. Read more →

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis needs to fix his convoluted Appointments Process

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis needs to clean up the obtuse appointments process he inherited. I really believe it was carried from a prior Democrat and is a deep state operation to only let insiders get information on openings, criteria and appointments. Did Charlie Crist holdovers design this clutterd system? See my video and recommendations to clean up the process. Read more →

Minneola City Council Oct. 1, 2019 Meeting Transparency is lacking due to poor online agenda!

Tonight's Oct. 1, 2019 Minneola, FL City Council meeting is not very transparent because they only posted a 4 page agenda online, have no meeting videos, and don't tell citizens that you have to email the City Clerk and specifically ask for a link to scattered documents (not in one pdf) supporting agenda items. That is not very transparent. Is this agenda method intentional to obfuscate what is happening at meetings? Read more →

The new Lake County 2019/2020 Property Tax TRIM Notices are Out - and you need to analyze them

The 2019-20 Lake County, FL property tax TRIM notices are out. We provide an example and some analysis, and tips how to analyze YOUR rates to understand if hidden increases are included. Read more →

Tavares, FL property owners should attend this budget workshop, or open your wallet for higher taxes

Tavares, FL residents need to read this about pending millage rate tax hikes at a City Council workshop on July 24, 2019 at 4pm. These issues of escalating taxes are affecting ALL city and county residents in Lake County and the rest of Florida. If you don't act now, then hold out your wallet for tax day. Read more →

Florida City gets hit with ransomware demands and pays $600,000 to regain access to their computers and files

A Florida City just paid $600,000 in bitcoin ransom to get access to their computer systems and files after a police department employee opened an email with ransomware code in it. I hope no Lake County, FL city or government agency wastes taxpayer funds by being a future victim of ransomware. Read all about it HERE. Vance Jochim FiscalRangers.com Read more →

More Lake County, FL Cities and government agencies need to provide Live or uploaded meeting videos!

Local cities and government agencies in Florida, including Lake County, FL, are reducing public transparency by removing most published documents, even for upcoming meeting agendas and staff packets, or annual financial reports or budgets. They are doing it to avoid nuisance lawsuits by roving bands of attorneys suing them for not spending thousands of taxpayer dollars to comply with Federal ADA laws related to "accessibility" for sight and hearing limited users. Read more →

A Florida homeowner's guide for coping with surprise real estate developments next door.

Florida homeowners may be blindsided by developer requests for questionable projects next to them like the proposed 4-story rental apartment complex on the shores of Lake Saunders near Tavares, FL next to the single story, single family residences. So we created a 36 minute Florida Homeowners guide to the land development process to understand how to make your voice heard or oppose outlandish land use developments. Read more →

Tavares, FL City Council April 3, 2019 Meeting & the Great Debate over Dumpster Enclosure Rules. See our video.

We reported on the April 3, 2019 meeting of the Tavares, FL City Council, plus a link to our video of the meeting. See the description for topics and links. Highlights were gripes about not allowing public input on upcoming development proposal hearings, update on the Tavares Performing Arts Center and the Great Dumpster Enclosure Debate. Read more →

Clermont, FL City Council votes to spend taxpayer funds to appeal a legal decision they lost.

The Clermont City Council lost a legal action to allow a charter school to build on a five acre lot with terrible traffic issues and neighbor complaints. Neither city staff or the Lake County School District wanted the project approved. Now the City attorney convinced the clearly vague Council to approve an expensive appeal of the legal decision. Neighbor opposition leader Dani Page made a video of that meeting which you can watch. The saga continues at taxpayer expense. Read more →

The Process inherited by the new Florida Governor to process appointments is convoluted and non-transparent!

We created a watchdog blog video of the convoluted, confusing and non-transparent process used by the Florida Governor's Appointments office to find filled and vacant positions and apply for them. Watch it - it took us 44 minutes to explain the whole bureaucratic "we always have done it this way" process. Read more →

Federal & Florida ADA Compliance laws are wrecking local government transparency and incurring huge costs

Tavares, FL March 11, 2019 Federal and Florida regulations on compliance with the American Disabilities Act (ADA) are causing excess costs and reduced public transparency over local government meeting videos, agendas, budgets and even annual financial reports (CAFR's). Essentially, some scummy lawyers found that ADA requirements can be interpreted to require that any local government has to provide online information in a format that can be read by ADA software tools used by the disabled, such as vision limited or hearing limited. Apparently, the tools use screen "scanning" to find text or picture captions that can then be converted to audio so the disabled can "read" or "hear" the online information. We wrote an earlier story about this in January 2019 HERE, after the Orlando Sentinel published a story about it. It contains more about the scummy lawsuits, so I did not repeat it here. The Jan. 6, 2019 Orlando Sentinel story is here. And very few local governments have the funds to revamp their websites and file systems to comply with the lawsuit demands. Now, a city like Orlando could afford to get the software and modify all their files so they can be read by the ADA tools,... Read more →

60 Local Government Employees based in Tavares, FL Earned $100k or more in 2017 per OpenTheBooks.org database

A government spending watchdog, OpenTheBooks.org, tracks wasteful government programs and also tracks local, state and Federal employee wages over $100k. We examined their reports for local cities in the Lake County area, and found 60 employees working in the Tavares, FL area for government that earned over $100k. OpenTheBooks.org also launched an initiative to encourage the Congress to launch a "War on Waste" by listing wasteful, stupid Federal programs and asking the government to publish budget details for transparency, and then eliminate the uncovered, wasteful programs. Read more →

Transparency over local government meeting agendas, minutes, videos, etc. is being damaged by ADA compliance lawsuits

Local governments like cities are being sued because their websites are not completely designed to comply with ADA requirements that were written before the internet was created.  For instance, cities cannot post meeting videos if they don't incur the expense to provide captions that software for the blind or deaf can read and translate so they can understand it.  Thus the benefit of transparency for 97% of the populations are shut down for 3% who complain. Read more →

Wunderbar - the new Lake County, FL Court Clerk, Gary Cooney, has Appointed a new, QUALIFIED, Inspector General

Wunderbar - the newly elected Lake County, FL Court Clerk, Gary Cooney, has Appointed a new, QUALIFIED, Inspector General, Terri Freeman. Read more →

Project Veritas uncovers a Deep State Federal Auditor working on anti-Capitalist campaigns at work - Call your Congressman

Project Veritas uncovered on video a FEDERAL GAO staffer and card-carrying member of the Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) admitting he works to destroy capitalism using work time. As a retired internal audit manager this makes me really angry so I submitted this video link and other information to Trey Gowdy's US House Oversight & Reform Committee and asked for a public investigation. Read more →