Bays dismisses overtaxing concerns, disses Charlie Kirk

By John Labriola - A week after Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia held a press conference to announce that Citrus County is overtaxing residents by $39 million a year, County Commissioner Rebecca Bays dismissed his findings at a town hall meeting in Lecanto.

"It's a formula, and that's not how government works," she said. 

Bays said she disagreed with Ingoglia's methodology, which involves taking the county's 2019-2020 general fund budget, indexing it for inflation and population growth, and then subtracting that from the current budget to determine the amount of excessive spending. 

Citrus County collects $112 million a year in ad valorem taxes, Bays said, of which $40 million goes to the sheriff's office. Along with other constitutional offices and state mandates commissioners have to fund, that doesn't leave the county much room to spare, she claimed. 

According to Ingoglia, over the last six years, Citrus County hired 278 employees, of which only 64 were first responders. He suggested the county reduce its staff, which he said has increased far too much for its 15 percent population growth.

Bays' dismissive attitude may have to do with the fact she cast the deciding vote in 2023 for a massive 18 percent tax increase.  

Bays also answered a question about the ongoing Charlie Kirk controversy. 

When the County Commission discussed the issue in November, Bays said she agreed with the Library Advisory Board's decision to reject a temporary Charlie Kirk book display. But in an apparent sop to the large crowd of supporters of the assassinated conservative icon in the audience that day, she voiced her support for renaming a road in Citrus County after him, as Sumter, Hernando, Lake and other counties have done. 

At the town hall meeting however, Bays confirmed she had no intention of following through on her words.

"I'm going to be really honest with you, the county has a whole lot of bigger issues to deal with than naming a road," she sneered condescendingly. "We got a whole plate of issues. Naming a road, the cream does not rise to the top on that one."

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