TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Speaking in Tampa, Governor Ron DeSantis announced he wants to bring a DOGE like effort to Florida.

“I am pleased to announce that we are announcing a comprehensive initiative to continue to streamline our government and to continue to eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy and to continue to ensure that tax dollars are used in the most efficient way possible,” DeSantis said.

The governor said his DOGE committee will only work for one year to look for government waste. He said he wants teams of auditors to use artificial intelligence to look at state contracts and spending to look for waste and redundancy.

“We are creating a state DOGE task force that will implement a multi-pronged approach to eliminating bureaucratic bloat,” DeSantis said.

The governor said he wants to immediately cut up to 70 state commissions and boards that are no longer needed and cut up to 900 state positions.

“Some of these boards haven’t met in recent years, some of them haven’t had appointments for many, many years,” said DeSantis.

Democratic State Representative Lindsay Cross from St. Petersburg called the announcement a publicity stunt.

“I think the Governor is just trying to parrot what is happening in Washington, D.C. and I don’t think anyone is looking to the federal government for how to model the way our government should work,” said Cross.

She says DOGE is not working in Washington, D.C. and she doesn’t think it will help Florida.

“What we’ve seen is really using a hatchet approach and so there has been a lot of chaos as a result, we’ve seen people get fired and then in a couple of days, those same people are then rehired,” said Cross.

She says if there is wasteful spending in Florida, it’s the fault of Republicans.

“The Republicans have been in power for nearly 30 years, so if there has been mismanagement, shame on them for not addressing it the last decade or the decade before,” said Cross.

St. Petersburg College Political Analyst Tara Newsom said the governor deserves some praise for the effort.

“Well, first off, let’s acknowledge how masterful Governor DeSantis has been in exporting the Florida blueprint to DC, and now he’s importing this DOGE efficiency model to Florida,” Newsom said.

However, she says DeSantis will face problems with a DOGE effort in Florida.

“He’s going to face the same uphill battle that President Trump is facing, which is growing litigation, growing separation of powers issues, and really to get slapped on the hand by our system of government, which says no one is the King, the President isn’t, the Governor isn’t,” Newsom said. “So, he’s going to face litigation, he’s going to be facing the state legislature, who are saying whoa, whoa, whoa, some of these pieces are left to us.”