The last Blueprint meeting was filled with interesting conversations. It was a day filled with budget information and a vote to give the city funding for the airport. We were honored to share a conversation with David O’Keefe on the budget and cost of the projects.
O’Keefe is a county commissioner. He is a strong advocate and open to solutions that address affordable housing. His record of addressing and weighing speaker’s concerns when making his decisions on local government items continues throughout every meeting he participates in.
O’Keefe was willing to spend some of his time answering our questions and clarifying some of the details around the blueprint meeting. We thank him for taking the time to talk with us and our neighbors about our local government.
FloridaCapitalTea: You gave some of your background on being a CPA. How does that experience and expertise allow you to be uniquely qualified on this information?
O’Keefe: In my CPA career, I’ve been on both the inside and outside of government audits and budgets. I’ve:
– Performed audits of governments, including Blueprint
– Been audited when I ran accounting departments
– Prepared public budgets to be approved by a board
That background gives me the tools to spot financial discrepancies that others might miss. I’m trained to ask: What’s missing? I know what a complete financial picture should look like, and I know what numbers the accounting office uses to build a budget. So when management tells me they don’t have that info, I know better, and I keep pushing.
The important thing to understand about an audit is who is responsible for what. Auditors are hired to audit management on behalf of the board. Management is responsible for preparing accurate financials and giving them to the auditors. The auditors test those numbers and internal control processes, and then produce a report to the Board on the results.
That’s why last week was so concerning. Management asked us to approve a draft audit that was missing multiple independent audit reports that I know are supposed to be there. I also noticed that there was no asset listed for the $1 million owed by SoMo Walls (Cascades Gardens LLC). So I called the auditors. I expected them to email me the missing reports and be done. But they told me the reports weren’t missing, they didn’t exist yet. They had just started the audit and only recently received numbers from management. We were being asked to approve an audit that had just started. That’s not typical and it is not acceptable.
FloridaCapitalTea: What information do you see here that is concerning?
O’Keefe: The bigger pattern is management resistance to oversight. The most concerning thing last week was that management didn’t show board members the $225 million increase in expected project costs from last year. I asked for the details and was told, repeatedly, that the information didn’t exist. But I knew better. I kept asking, and eventually I got it.
That allowed me to prepare a report for the Board and the public. It was the kind of report we used to receive every year until a few years ago.
For example, since last September alone, the Northeast Gateway: Welaunee Blvd estimated costs increased $64 million to almost $200 million. There was no vote, no agenda item, no explanation. That’s not how fiscal oversight is supposed to work. We’ve seen similar cost escalations on other projects, and management has asserted that they no longer need Board approval. I strongly disagree.
FloridaCapitalTea: Are there any protocols or procedures that Blueprint could consider building into the projects to help dampen the ballooning costs?
O’Keefe: We need to restore the oversight authority the Board used to have, and we need a majority of commissioners willing to insist on it. I appreciate my colleagues who take that responsibility seriously and have pushed for greater accountability. But we need more of us to step up.
This isn’t just about spreadsheets and process. This is about being honest and accountable to the public. This is about earning the trust of the citizens who pay this one-cent sales tax. We have to have the trust of voters if they are going to renew Blueprint for 2040.
FloridaCaptialTea: Can our neighbors do anything to help direct these projects?
O’Keefe: Yes. Let your city and county commissioners know that you want them to reclaim their authority over Blueprint. If management or legal counsel raise procedural objections repeatedly to block basic oversight, and a majority of commissioners don’t vote to keep our oversight authority, then we stay stuck. It wasn’t always like this.
FloridaCapitalTea: Is there anything else you’d like to add to this conversation that we didn’t ask you?
Yes, I’d like to explain how I think we got to this point without taking pages of your readers’ time at this point. I know people aren’t always able to follow every meeting or learn parliamentary procedure, and so it can be easily overlooked.
The Blueprint budgeting process changed, and commissioners lost their seat at the table.
For years, Blueprint required that any increase to a project’s total budget come back to the Board for approval. That gave elected officials and the public a direct say. But that changed quietly in 2023. After the Board declined to approve a $35 million increase for the Airport Gateway in September 2023, management stopped seeking approval.
Now, they increase budgets internally, with no vote and no agenda item, as long as the project “scope” hasn’t changed and funding is available.
That’s not a policy the Board voted on. It’s a workaround. It removes transparency from the process. In the past, we saw clear tables showing the original estimate, the proposed increase, and the board had to approve them. Now? We see a single number for the annual allocation to the whole program and no breakdown of where the money is going. Since 2024, we also don’t see or approve transfers between project budgets.
Until I demanded the project cost information from management and built a report myself, that detail was hidden.
Even getting cost information has become a challenge.
When I asked how project budgets had changed over time, management claimed it wasn’t something they tracked or budgeted for. But I know that’s not true. You can’t build a total budget without knowing what’s underneath it. I pushed, and eventually got the data.
What’s especially frustrating is that I had the same fight last September. I asked for project-level budget data. They resisted. I insisted. Eventually, I got it. And this year, they acted like the whole conversation had never happened.
Since getting the data, I created a spreadsheet and shared it with the Board and the public. It shows the kind of detailed cost information we used to get every year in management-prepared agendas. That level of transparency stopped right after the Board rejected a major cost increase.
This isn’t a formal policy change. It’s a reaction to pushback on major cost increases. I hope more of my colleagues will join me in restoring transparency and accountability. A few already have, and that gives me hope.
There are also unresolved legal and procedural questions that make oversight harder. The Board has tried to preserve oversight of Blueprint management, and we are continually told by our Chair or by Blueprint Legal Counsel that we are not allowed to do much of anything by policy.
Even talk of having legal counsel to report to the board was rejected by procedure. Most governments have attorneys who report to the board, not to management. Many of these legal decisions directly conflict with what I’ve heard from attorneys experienced in public ethics and transparency. I’m not a lawyer, and I understand there can be differences. But when we are blocked from exercising normal board authority like in another government agency, it doesn’t make sense.
In fact, a procedure issue blocked a vote on reducing the scope of the Airport Gateway after we didn’t approve the massive increase requested by management. We had a vote to reduce the scope of the project, then three members left the meeting, and we lost a quorum, ending the meeting. Roberts Rules say that any open and remaining business items are picked up at the next meeting. When I brought this up and referenced Roberts Rules of Order, Blueprint counsel said they have a policy that supersedes that rule. It doesn’t make sense.
It shouldn’t be this hard, and the truth is, I don’t encounter this level of resistance in Leon County government. We can disagree on policy. That’s normal. But the process is clear, management is responsive, and transparency is a given.
We should expect nothing less from Blueprint.
