Despite eleventh-hour pressure from the state to cut spending and lower taxes, Orange’s Board of County Commissioners signed off on an $8.3 billion budget which grew the fund that pays for core services by about 2% from last year while not changing the property tax rate.

The Thursday vote came as Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia and Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings cited conflicting sets of numbers on county growth. The numbers weren’t wrong, an Orlando Sentinel review showed, but each man used different time frames that boosted their arguments.

Ingoglia, appointed to the post by Gov. Ron DeSantis over the summer, began the week blasting the county’s budget as bloated with “excessive and wasteful spending” to the tune of $190 million.

But Demings noted the county’s growi

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