Joseph Abruzzo was elected to be the Comptroller of Palm Beach County on January 5, 2021 a role that requires him to properly invest billions of dollars in taxpayer money. For the majority of his tenure, Joseph Abruzzo has successfully fulfilled his role and properly managed taxpayer dollars with positive returns for Palm Beach County. Throughout his tenure as Comptroller, Abruzzo has achieved a record investment return for Palm Beach County in 2023 ($172 million dollars in investment income) and in 2024 ($230 million dollars in investment income) and has received the Center for Fiduciary Excellence Certification from the Centre for Fiduciary Excellence. The Comptroller first invested in Israel Bonds in 2021, and achieved record investments and fiduciary excellence while maintaining this investment. However, investments that were once prudent can become imprudent. Israel Bonds have been a prudent investment for government officials in the past due to Israel's positive credit ratings and financial stability. Israel Bonds function like loans: When an entity invests in them, they are paid back by the state of Israel in a certain amount of time in addition to interest. Therefore, if Israel has an unstable economic environment, the likelihood that Israel Bonds are a prudent investment decreases. Furthermore, government officials have a higher standard for their investments than a private investor, as they are investing taxpayer dollars. Therefore, they must avoid investments that even maintain the appearance of instability, even if they may lead to positive returns.

Moody's explicitly stated that "the key driver for the downgrade is our view that geopolitical risk has intensified significantly further, to very high levels, with material negative consequences for Israel's creditworthiness in both the near and longer term." Moody's went so far as to call investments in Israel Bonds and the Israel economy as nearing the point of being "junk" investments. 

In the past, Palm Beach County had a 5% limit on how much of its portfolio that increased to 10% in 2021 and that Comptroller Abruzzo requested be raised to 15% amidst Israel's ongoing military campaign in Gaza in order to invest more funds in Israel Bonds. It is unusual for 15% of a county's portfolio to be invested in one entity, even if the entity was a stable and prudent investment.

According to a recent article published on Israel's economy, "with each passing month, Israel's economy is approaching stagnation, if not recession, as the risks of regional conflagration intensify. Growth fell from 6.5% in 2022 to 2% in 2023, and was expected to fall to 1.1% over 2024 as a whole according to the government's latest forecasts, released in early September." 

Roughly 60,000 Israeli companies will close this year due to manpower shortages, logistics disruptions, and subdued business sentiment. Israel has imposed strict controls on the movement of Palestinian workers, forgoing up to 160,000 workers. More than 760,000 Israelis are not working due to the war in Gaza. Israel's central bank reported that the shortage in workers has cost the economy a staggering $600,000,000 million a week. 

The Israeli government can't rely on a healthy flow of tax revenue from businesses, as many of them are collapsing. The Israeli government continually cites its tech sector as a steady stream of revenue. However, a report by Startup Nation Central, a non-profit that promotes Israel's tech industry globally, has noted that Israel's tech sector will not be sustainable in the face of the uncertainty created by the prolonged conflict and the government's destructive economic policy. 

There are far too many cases where local governments in the United States have improperly invested their funds, resulting in credit downgrades for the locality, higher taxes and reduced social services for residents, and a diminished borrowing reputation that took years to repair (See Orange County, California, Detroit, Michigan, and Jefferson County, Alabama). Today, there are laws and investment policies in place to regulate a government officials' investment of taxpayer dollars to avoid improper investments and negative consequences to the fiscal health of a locality and its constituents. Comptroller Abruzzo has unfortunately violated the Florida laws and the portions of Palm Beach County's investment policies that intend to prevent such mismanagement.