Fire Chief Dru Driscoll announced his resignation from the Daytona Beach Fire Department after a 27-year career, months after an internal investigation revealed issues with departmental spending.

Driscoll's last day is July 24, according to the city, which also praised his career in a statement.

NEWS6 reports that Driscoll's statement came after a tumultuous period in which the city's internal auditor published a comprehensive analysis of the fire department's expenditures from 2021 to 2025. The audit discovered that over $500,000 had been charged to city buying cards, or P-cards, primarily for fuel and auto repairs, which is against city regulations.

Auditors also found 14 department employees who used take-home vehicles failed to maintain mileage records, making it difficult to distinguish between personal and business use. Additional expenditures that were flagged included the spending over $50,000 on fast food, hundreds of transactions with missing receipts and around $50,000 in undocumented technology purchases, including items including a beer-can cooler, more than a dozen televisions and baby shower decorations.

Whistleblowers raised concerns to elected authorities, prompting the audit. Firefighters and the president of the fire union told City Commissioner Stacy Cantu directly about their concerns.

“There’s no logs kept,” Cantu said. “That means... we were paying for their insurance, their gas, are we paying for that when they’re not working?”

Despite the evidence, Driscoll disputed the report's conclusions, and when city auditor Abenit Belachew presented his findings to the commission in April, the discussion lasted for hours.

Belachew said he gave the report to the city manager and the fire chief in February, giving them an opportunity to comment, but neither did, so he wasn't prepared for the backlash.

“The message was clear — you need to push back an auditor, you need to question audit findings, not you need to implement corrective action,” Belachew said.

Belachew stated his role is to identify weaknesses in supervision, and it is the responsibility of the courts to determine whether fraud occurred. Since then, at least 14 take-home cars have been taken from the assigned users.

“Regardless of that amount, the elected people should be concerned of why we are spending a penny without a good reason,” Belachew said.

A citywide audit is underway, officials said.