Gov. DeSantis taps ally Blaise Ingoglia as Florida CFO, snubbing President Trump's pick
Gov. Ron DeSantis named state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia as Florida’s new Chief Financial Officer, more than three months after Jimmy Patronis left the Cabinet post to take a seat in Congress.
Ingoglia, 54, is a Spring Hill Republican and businessman who is a staunch DeSantis ally. He owns homebuilding company Hartland Homes and listed his net worth at $28.3 million on his most recent financial disclosure.
He served as chair of the Republican Party of Florida in 2015–19 and later helped run a DeSantis political committee when the governor ran for the GOP nomination for president in 2024.
Patronis previously urged DeSantis to name a successor well before he left office, saying the post was too important to be left vacant for long.
But DeSantis said he wanted to vet potential candidates and didn’t want to fill the post until after the legislative session, which was supposed to end May 2 but ultimately dragged on until June 16 amid a stalemate over budget talks between the state House and Senate.
School lunches’ future unclear
With less than a month before school starts, it’s unclear if students who were previously eligible for free meals will still receive that food.
With the passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” trillions of dollars were cut from social safety nets thousands of Brevard residents rely on like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP.
The fallout is likely to impact school lunches. In the past, kids whose families received food stamps or Medicaid were automatically eligible for free meals, and schools received federal funding to provide free meals based on the percentage of low-income students they served.
It’s not clear exactly how broad these impacts may be, or how quickly they may be felt. Brevard Public Schools did not respond to FLORIDA TODAY’s requests for comment on how they may be affected.
Indialantic man, 69, struck by minivan in beachside crosswalk zone, police say
A 69-year-old pedestrian is in critical condition after being struck by a minivan while walking in a marked, flashing crosswalk in Indialantic.
The crash happened in the morning on July 15, according to Indialantic police.
The pedestrian suffered head injuries and was unresponsive but breathing as paramedics arrived to treat his injuries.
Investigators said the pedestrian was crossing at a crosswalk equipped with flashing beacons to alert drivers to pedestrians when he was struck.
No charges were filed, but the investigation remains ongoing as officers review evidence from the site.
‘Very low risk’ on river
At Brevard’s southern border, near the St Johns River’s headwaters, the river’s levels are now at or near where federal regulations require opening levee gates to release water into nearby former pastures. That mimics the river’s historic natural flow before it was ditched and drained decades ago for farming.
But its levels now are nowhere near what would require more drastic measures, such as opening the floodgates to canals that flow to the Indian River Lagoon, water managers said during a July tour.
In the wake of recent flooding tragedies in states like Texas, North Carolina and New Mexico, management district officials assured that such flashflood events are extremely unlikely here, given the low-lying land. The shallow river has plenty of space to swell over very flat land.
Even a levee breach wouldn’t likely cause neighborhood flooding. That’s more driven by local tributaries and stormwater infrastructure failures.