You’re wondering why there’s so much criticism of our local government?
Watch the video replays of the County Commission’s back-to-back meetings last week, when members spent more than six hours across two days addressing matters that should’ve been resolved in a fraction of the time, including a budget issue that appeared to have been previously decided.
“It wasn’t our finest hour,” one commissioner said, asking to remain anonymous.
It wasn’t the commissioners’ finest week – although, despite being sharply divided, their often-contentious discussions did ultimately produce sensible solutions.
After arguing for more than two hours at their Sept. 9 meeting, the commissioners voted 3-2 to give the county administrator and county attorney 2.5-percent annual pay raises questioned in a recent audit report that ignited a controversy and prompted a law-enforcement inquiry.
The salary increases weren’t approved, however, until commissioners Susan Adams and Laura Moss caved in to Commissioner Joe Earman’s demand that County Attorney John Titkanich return the $9,000-plus in unauthorized raises he had been receiving since June.
“Sometimes,” Adams said after the meeting, “you have to try to find the middle ground.”
That’s precisely what Commission Vice Chairman Deryl Loar attempted to do the next day, late in a bizarre – and sometimes alarming – budget hearing that was gaveled to order at 5 p.m. and didn’t end until 10:30 p.m.
The commissioners haggled for more than four hours, interrupted by a 45-minute recess, before voting to reject Sheriff Eric Flowers’ bloated budget proposal for the 2025-26 fiscal year.
It marked the third time in less than month that the commission told Flowers his request for a $12.2 million budget increase was not realistic, despite the sheriff’s claims that the additional funds were needed to give across-the-board pay raises to his deputies and improve starting salaries.
On this occasion, though, the commissioners – at Loar’s urging – agreed to remain open to any mid-fiscal-year budget amendments brought by the sheriff to add to the $6.8 million increase that was approved.
“Depending on how things are tracking, and his needs, we would be in a better position in a lot of ways,” said Loar, who served as the county’s sheriff for 12 years before retiring from law enforcement in 2021 and successfully running for a commission seat in 2022.
Loar made his suggestion against the backdrop of the Florida Legislature’s ongoing push to reduce property taxes, which currently fund substantial portions of city and county budgets.
By late next March, he said, the commission should have a better feel for state lawmakers’ intentions regarding tax cuts, which could include increasing the homestead exemption.
The sheriff did not attend the Wednesday hearing and, as of Monday, had not formally responded to the commission’s latest refusal to meet his budget-increase request, which he reduced from $14.6 million to $12.2 million last month.
But based on his prior remarks, there was little reason to believe Flowers, who last week released via the agency’s social-media platforms another slick video in which he continued to make his case, would be receptive to the commission’s new proposal.
Still, Loar’s recommendation was more than reasonable.
Certainly, it was considerably more rational than Flescher’s stunning – and, quite frankly, preposterous – recommendation that the commission dip into its reserve account to fully fund the sheriff’s request.
It was stunning because Flescher, a staunch Republican, professes to be a fiscal conservative who takes seriously his role as a steward of the taxpayer dollar.
It was preposterous because Flescher, now in his fifth term on the commission, knows it’s fiscally irresponsible to use the county’s reserve accounts to fund recurring expenses, except in emergency circumstances.
“That’s Business 101,” Adams said.
So why did Flescher raise the possibility? Did he really believe it was the best option for the community? Or was he simply hoping to appease the sheriff’s supporters, knowing the other commissioners would never go for it, anyway?
For the record: The chairman, who plans to seek a sixth term next year, has said he doesn’t allow politics to color his commission decisions.
Reached by phone Sunday, Flescher confirmed that the driving force behind his failed pitch to pull from reserve accounts was the commission’s day-before vote to approve the annual raises for Titkanich and County Attorney Jennifer Shuler.
If the commission could afford to give raises to its administrator and attorney, Flescher said, there’s no reason it shouldn’t do everything possible to fully fund the Sheriff’s Office.
By dipping into its reserves, he added, the $6.8 million increase the commission planned to give to the sheriff could be diverted back to the county’s General Fund, thus avoiding the staffing cuts and service reductions that otherwise would be necessary in other departments.
“Generally, we do not take anything from reserve accounts to begin a budget, but this is a very unique situation,” Flescher said in defense of his proposal, adding, “I felt it resolves most of the concerns, and after yesterday’s actions, I felt compelled.”
The repeated reference to the commission’s Tuesday vote awarding the raises to Titkanich and Shuler noticeably and understandably irked Earman, who said he saw no correlation between the two matters and was “a bit offended” by Flescher’s attempts to connect them.
“What we did yesterday, we did for different reasons,” Earman told the chairman. “It’s time to put that behind us and get to important things, like what we’re doing right now.”
To be sure, Flescher and Loar opposed not only giving the administrator and attorney the raises – because both Titkanich and Shuler signed contracts that didn’t specifically include them – but also the decision by the other three commissioners to address them last week.
Loar, in fact, opened the commission’s Tuesday meeting by asking that the matter be removed from the agenda to avoid interfering with a “preliminary inquiry” being conducted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Titkanich’s pay raise, which became effective in June, was flagged by the county Comptroller’s Office during a routine audit last month. The discovery prompted a 32-page report stating the salary increase needed to be approved by the commission.
While the report questioned the process Titkanich followed to obtain the raise, it stopped short of accusing the administrator of any ill-intent, instead alleging a “breakdown in internal control procedures.”
Titkanich has maintained that he did nothing wrong, saying he consulted with Shuler in May – she told him he was entitled to the annual raise, as was she – and discussed the pay increase with each of the five commissioners.
Flescher, however, said he told Titkanich last spring the administrator’s contract did not make him eligible for the annual raise afforded to other county employees.
Earman, Adams and Moss, on the other hand, said they saw no reason to exclude Titkanich from the pay increase.
Make no mistake, though: The commission’s vote to require Titkanich to return the money he had already received was an indictment of the administrator’s decision to put through the pay raise without proper authorization.
It was also an unspoken rebuke of the legal opinion Shuler offered to Titkanich and her failure to advise him to seek the commission’s prior approval, especially after realizing the language in their contracts was ambiguous.
