FLORIDA BULLDOG South Florida’s Nonprofit Investigative Newsroom FloridaBulldog.org | Fort Lauderdale, Florida | Est. 2009
PRESS RELEASE — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Date: March 21, 2026 Source: FloridaBulldog.org — South Florida’s Independent Nonprofit Investigative Newsroom
From the corridors of Broward County’s sheriff’s office to the marble halls of Tallahassee, from Miami’s gleaming condo towers to the sweltering living rooms of working families who can no longer afford to cool their homes — South Florida is a place where power and accountability are in constant collision. Florida Bulldog is the newsroom that lives at that collision point. We are South Florida’s independent, nonprofit investigative news organization, and for more than 15 years we have done the reporting that the region’s most powerful figures wish we would stop doing.
Founded in Fort Lauderdale in 2009 by award-winning journalist Dan Christensen — a veteran of The Miami Herald and Daily Business Review whose reporting has sent a Broward sheriff to prison, produced unanimous Florida Supreme Court rulings, and inspired landmark federal court reform — Florida Bulldog is staffed by experienced reporters who cover Broward County, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and the corridors of state and federal power that shape life across South Florida. We serve the communities of Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Coral Springs, Pembroke Pines, Hollywood, Boca Raton, West Palm Beach, Pompano Beach, Deerfield Beach, Sunrise, and every city and town in between that deserves honest, fearless journalism.
As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization funded entirely by readers, donors, and foundations, Florida Bulldog answers to no advertiser, no political party, and no corporate interest. Our reporters follow the money, the public records, and the sources — wherever they lead. In this edition, Florida Bulldog’s investigations focus on four stories that matter deeply to South Florida residents: a state CFO who tours the region preaching transparency while his agency violates transparency law; a new Broward sheriff’s undersheriff and the violent confrontation that put him in the headlines his first week on the job; Trump administration cuts that threaten to leave tens of thousands of South Florida’s poorest households without help paying their electric bills in the summer heat; and a bribery scandal involving a school safety app used across Broward County’s schools that has sent law enforcement agencies scrambling.
South Florida is a region that punches above its weight in terms of political importance, demographic complexity, and investigative story potential. It is a place where the stakes of journalism — for communities that are often underserved, over-policed, and under-represented in the halls of power — are especially high. Florida Bulldog exists to serve those communities and to hold accountable the institutions and individuals whose decisions shape their lives. If you believe that work matters, please read these stories, share them with your neighbors, and consider making a tax-deductible donation to Florida Bulldog at FloridaBulldog.org/donate-to-florida-bulldog.
Florida CFO Ingoglia Preaches Accountability While Breaking Transparency Law
By Daniel Ducassi | FloridaBulldog.org | March 8, 2026
Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia has made a signature issue of fiscal accountability and government transparency, touring South Florida and the state to declare that elected officials must answer to the public for how they spend taxpayer money. That message rang loudly in Broward County, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach — communities whose residents pay substantial state taxes and have every right to expect the transparency Ingoglia promises. But Florida Bulldog reporter Daniel Ducassi has found that Ingoglia’s own Department of Financial Services has been systematically violating the very transparency law his office is responsible for enforcing, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars in state contracts hidden from public view in violation of Florida’s Transparency Florida Act.
The Transparency Florida Act requires every state agency to post copies of all contracts to the Florida Accountability Contract Tracking System within 30 days of signing. Florida Bulldog’s investigation found that the CFO’s own department has repeatedly failed to post contracts as required — contributing to a broader pattern of non-compliance that Florida Bulldog’s earlier reporting found amounts to more than $6 billion in missing documentation across the DeSantis administration. The CFO’s office did not respond to Florida Bulldog’s requests for comment.
The political backdrop makes the story even more striking. Ingoglia was one of the officials who stood alongside Governor DeSantis in Fort Lauderdale last July to announce what they called a “new era of accountability” — a public commitment to audit local governments for wasteful spending and demand fiscal transparency from every corner of Florida government. That announcement was made in South Florida. It was covered by South Florida media. And it was applauded by South Florida residents who had every reason to take it at face value. Florida Bulldog’s reporting shows they should not have.
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Florida Bulldog’s investigation found that the Bureau of Auditing — which falls under the CFO’s oversight — has audited only three governor’s office contracts since Ingoglia took office, collectively worth less than $600,000. The CFO’s own website indicates that the last time the office audited contract management practices for the Division of Emergency Management was in 2013, and that it has never audited contract management practices for the Executive Office of the Governor. These are the very offices responsible for the billions in hidden emergency contracts that Florida Bulldog’s reporting has documented.
State Senate candidate Jose Javier Rodriguez told Florida Bulldog: “The state government in Tallahassee got drunk on emergency powers in the pandemic and they just haven’t stopped. It is a feast for politically connected donors that want to get their hands on no-bid contracts.” Rodriguez added that Attorney General James Uthmeier — who served as DeSantis’s general counsel and chief of staff when many of the contracts were awarded — is at the center of the corruption. Uthmeier’s representatives did not respond to Florida Bulldog’s requests for comment.
For South Florida residents, the implications of this story are concrete and local. When state emergency contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars are hidden from public view, the companies receiving that money — and the political donations they make in return — escape the scrutiny that is the taxpayer’s only defense against pay-to-play contracting. Florida Bulldog’s reporting has identified the major beneficiaries of these hidden contracts and documented their political contributions to DeSantis’s political operation, the Republican Party of Florida, and the political committees of the very officials responsible for the transparency oversight that was never performed.
New BSO Undersheriff Robson and the ‘Patty Cake’ Confrontation
By Dan Christensen | FloridaBulldog.org | February 27, 2026
Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony — whose tenure has been marked by a remarkable series of controversies documented extensively by Florida Bulldog — had barely promoted his new undersheriff before that undersheriff became the center of his own controversy. Florida Bulldog editor Dan Christensen has reported that Col. Steve Robson, elevated to undersheriff after Tony abruptly fired longtime Undersheriff Nichole Anderson over fears she might run against him in 2028, was involved in a physical confrontation with a suspect inside the Broward Sheriff’s Office Finance Department — an incident that sources inside BSO are already calling the “patty cake” case, and which is generating serious questions about how command staff at the agency handle use-of-force situations.
The confrontation occurred not on a street or in a high-crime neighborhood but inside BSO’s own Finance Department — an administrative setting that makes the physicality of the incident particularly unusual and noteworthy. Florida Bulldog’s reporting draws on police sources within the agency who describe Robson as having positioned himself as the victim in the aftermath of the confrontation, a characterization that has generated skepticism among veteran BSO personnel. The suspect involved in the incident was arrested by another officer, BSO Sgt. Webb.
The patty cake case arrived at a deeply turbulent moment for the Broward Sheriff’s Office. Tony had just fired Anderson — the agency’s experienced and widely respected undersheriff — along with her aide Sharon Hayes and her driver Captain Jamie Smith, all because police sources say Tony feared Anderson might challenge him politically. In the same week, Tony also fired Col. Andrew Dunbar, a 34-year BSO veteran promoted to colonel just a year earlier. The back-to-back firings, followed immediately by Robson’s promotion and then his involvement in the Finance Department confrontation, have created a picture of an agency in considerable internal turmoil.
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Florida Bulldog’s coverage of the Broward Sheriff’s Office spans years and multiple administrations, and it provides South Florida readers with the most detailed and independent record of how Broward’s most powerful law enforcement agency is run. The BSO serves over two million residents across Broward County, including unincorporated communities in Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Pompano Beach, Deerfield Beach, and dozens of other municipalities. When command staff changes, use-of-force incidents, and internal political purges roil the agency, South Florida residents have a direct interest in understanding what is happening and why.
The patty cake incident also raises questions about the context in which it occurred. A violent felon who showed up at BSO’s Finance Department is an unusual event requiring careful handling. That the new undersheriff became physically involved in the confrontation and then positioned himself publicly as a victim worthy of a medal is a characterization that not everyone inside BSO finds credible. Sources interviewed by Florida Bulldog described varying perspectives within the agency about what actually happened and whether Robson’s account reflects what the available security camera footage would show.
Florida Bulldog’s reporting on the Broward Sheriff’s Office has historically been ahead of every other news outlet in South Florida — breaking the story of Tony’s 1993 murder arrest, his concealment of past employment, his ethics proceedings, and now the rapid-fire personnel changes and controversies of his administration’s latest chapter. This is the kind of deep, source-intensive local law enforcement reporting that directly affects the safety and governance of South Florida communities — and that only an independent, nonprofit newsroom with the resources to sustain long-term investigative coverage can consistently produce.
Trump Cuts to LIHEAP Threaten a Brutal Summer for Low-Income South Floridians
FloridaBulldog.org | April 18, 2025
South Florida is the hottest major metropolitan region in the United States, and for the tens of thousands of low-income households in Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties who rely on federal energy assistance to pay their electric bills, the prospect of a summer without that help is not an inconvenience — it is a life-threatening emergency. Florida Bulldog has reported in detail on how the Trump administration’s cuts to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), combined with federal staff reductions that have stalled the disbursement of already-allocated funds, are threatening to leave some of South Florida’s most vulnerable residents — elderly people, people with disabilities, and working families living paycheck to paycheck — without the cooling assistance they depend on to survive the region’s brutal summer heat.
LIHEAP was created by Congress in 1981, providing financial assistance to approximately 6.2 million eligible households nationwide to help pay heating and cooling costs and avoid utility disconnection. In Florida — the state where cooling costs are highest and where summer heat regularly reaches dangerous levels — the program is literally a matter of survival for vulnerable residents. Congress allocated $4.1 billion to LIHEAP for the current fiscal year, but disbursement of those funds has been thrown into jeopardy by the Trump administration’s mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the program.
The impact is already being felt in Broward County. Florida Bulldog reported that by April 2025, Broward County had stopped accepting new LIHEAP applications for emergency assistance for the second consecutive month, with the county’s online application portal shut down. Residents checking the county website were told to “check back.” For elderly residents and people with disabilities in Fort Lauderdale, Pompano Beach, Deerfield Beach, and communities across Broward who were counting on LIHEAP assistance to make it through the coming summer, the portal closure was a signal that the help they had counted on might not arrive.
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Florida Power and Light told Florida Bulldog that LIHEAP “provides essential support for Florida’s most vulnerable residents, especially our state’s seniors” and that FPL has historically worked with Florida’s congressional delegation to ensure full funding of the program. But FPL was noncommittal when Florida Bulldog asked what the company might do to help low-income customers if the federal program was disrupted. Mark Wolfe of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association told Florida Bulldog that he was “very concerned that the lack of staff will result in delays in the $378 million in unreleased LIHEAP funding to the states.”
Florida Bulldog’s reporting connects the human reality of the LIHEAP crisis to the specific policy decisions and administrative failures that created it. State Rep. Debra Tendrich, D-Lantana, told Florida Bulldog she was deeply concerned about the impact on constituents in her South Florida district. Kristi Hill, assistant director of Broward County’s Family Success Administration Division, provided Florida Bulldog with on-the-ground detail about the program’s collapse. This kind of community-rooted, source-intensive reporting on the real-world consequences of federal policy for South Florida residents is exactly what Florida Bulldog’s local focus and nonprofit model make possible.
The stakes of this story extend beyond any single summer. If the Trump administration succeeds in effectively eliminating or permanently starving LIHEAP of funding and staff, the consequences for South Florida’s low-income communities will be measured in heat-related illness, utility disconnections, and in the worst cases, death. Florida leads the nation in heat-related mortality among the elderly, and LIHEAP is one of the few targeted federal interventions that directly addresses the cooling cost burden that makes summer dangerous for the region’s most vulnerable residents. Florida Bulldog will continue to follow this story and report on its impact across Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties.
SaferWatch CEO Bribery Arrest Panics Broward Schools and South Florida Law Enforcement
By Dan Christensen | FloridaBulldog.org | February 14, 2026
The arrest of the CEO of SaferWatch — the school and public safety app that Broward County Schools, the Broward Sheriff’s Office, and numerous South Florida law enforcement agencies have promoted and contracted with — on federal bribery charges in New York has sent local officials reaching for their phones and their lawyers. Florida Bulldog editor Dan Christensen has broken the story and its South Florida dimensions: SaferWatch CEO Geno Roefaro, a Pompano Beach resident whose Intracoastal Waterway home is valued at $2.4 million by Broward’s Property Appraiser, was charged in connection with an alleged scheme to bribe a New York City police official to steer city contracts to Roefaro’s Florida-based company.
The federal allegations against Roefaro are stark. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, Roefaro’s alleged co-conspirator “monetized his authority and influence for personal gain, promising to advise and pressure others in City government to award contracts to a Florida businessman” — Roefaro — “in return for tens of thousands of dollars in cash and gifts, including luxury hotel lodging, a helicopter tour and Broadway tickets.” These are not minor allegations — they describe a deliberate pattern of government contract corruption that reached from New York City’s school safety apparatus to South Florida’s own contract landscape.
The South Florida dimensions of this story are extensive. Sheriff Tony has been one of SaferWatch’s most prominent public boosters in Broward County, heavily promoting the app as a key tool for school safety. BSO extended a “SaferWatch partnership to the religious community” as far back as 2020. Broward Schools Superintendent Howard Hepburn also provided a public testimonial for SaferWatch that appeared on the company’s website. Florida Bulldog asked the critical question that every South Florida official who endorsed or contracted with SaferWatch is now nervously considering: were any of these officials paid by Roefaro for their endorsements?
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The SaferWatch story also intersects with the business empire of Blue Spear Solutions LLC, a company founded by Sheriff Tony before he was appointed sheriff and now run by his wife Holly. In June 2025, Broward Public Schools issued a press release describing a partnership with Blue Spear for bleeding control training — listing SaferWatch as one of Blue Spear’s supporters. The connections between a sitting sheriff’s wife’s company, the school safety app whose CEO has now been arrested on federal bribery charges, and the Broward school system that contracts with both raise questions that Florida Bulldog is pursuing with the same rigor it brings to every accountability story affecting South Florida’s schools and law enforcement.
Roefaro is not a fringe figure in South Florida political circles. Florida Bulldog’s reporting found that he donated nearly $50,000 to support the failed 2024 bid of James Reyes for Miami-Dade sheriff, gave generously to Governor DeSantis’s presidential campaign, and contributed heavily to the 2025 Senate campaign of Ashley Moody. The pattern of political giving by a man now accused of federal bribery raises important questions about whether his company’s contracts with South Florida governments were influenced by those political relationships — and whether the officials who accepted his donations and promoted his app received anything in return.
For the parents of children in Broward County schools and for taxpayers across South Florida who funded the SaferWatch contracts now under scrutiny, the federal bribery arrest of SaferWatch’s CEO is not a distant New York story. It is a South Florida story — one that goes to the integrity of how public safety contracts are awarded and how officials responsible for those contracts relate to the vendors who benefit from them. Florida Bulldog is the newsroom reporting that story from the inside, with sources in the institutions involved and a track record of following the money wherever it leads.
ABOUT FLORIDA BULLDOG
Florida Bulldog is South Florida’s independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative newsroom. Founded in Fort Lauderdale in 2009 by award-winning journalist Dan Christensen — a former investigative reporter for The Miami Herald and Daily Business Review — Florida Bulldog serves the communities of Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and the entire state of Florida. Our veteran journalists cover government, politics, law enforcement, the courts, education, business, the environment, and public safety. A 501(c)(3) organization and proud member of the Investigative News Network. No ads. No corporate owners. No political agenda. Just the truth.
Read all of our reporting: www.FloridaBulldog.org
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CONTACT INFORMATION
For general inquiries: Mail@floridabulldog.org
Editor and Founder: Dan Christensen dchristensen@floridabulldog.org Phone: 954-603-1351
Director of Development: Kitty Barran kbarran@floridabulldog.org Phone: 954-817-3434
Mailing Address: Florida Bulldog P.O. Box 23763 Fort Lauderdale, FL 33307
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