Demings’ transition could be difficult
Size of government is daunting, experts say
Orange County Mayor-elect Jerry Demings, fresh off a landslide and historic win Tuesday, faces a complicated transition from leading the Sheriff’s Office to running county government.
Sheriff for a decade, Demings wasted no time in gearing up for the changeover that will take place in three months after his victory with 62 percent of the vote over Orange County Commissioner Pete Clarke and Winter Park businessman Rob Panepinto.
He’ll take over for term-limited Mayor Teresa Jacobs, who is in the midst of her own transition after her election Tuesday as Orange County School Board chair.
On Wednesday, the first African-American elected county mayor talked about the transition with two members of Jacobs’ management team, County Administrator Ajit Lalchandani and County Attorney Jeffrey Newton.
In a post-election speech, Demings, 59, said he is assem-
bling a “transition team of volunteer citizens to develop a plan of action that establishes an organizational structure for my administration in meeting current and future needs of Orange County.”
He is scheduled to step down as sheriff Dec. 4, the day he takes the oath as mayor.
His new job will seem overwhelming at times, said Rich Crotty, who went from Orange County property appraiser to county chairman — former name of the mayor’s position — in 2001. Demings served under Crotty from 2002-08 as public safety director.
“The bigness of what he’s facing is what he has to get his arms around,” said Crotty, who held county government’s top post until 2011, a tenure that included the challenges that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. “You’re talking about 7,300 employees, 1,003 square miles, a county that has a bigger budget than the budgets of six or seven states.”
Orange County is even bigger now — with 8,060 employees and a budget of $4.25 billion.
The Sheriff’s Office, which Demings has led since 2008, has 2,311 employees and a $247 million budget.
Orange County’s population was estimated at 928,000 people when Crotty took office. Census data puts it at 1.35 million people now, a 45 percent increase in that period.
Though Demings boasted through the campaign about his “dramafree” leadership at the Orlando Police Department, where he served as chief from 1998 to 2002, and the Sheriff’s Office, he has not managed a conglomerate like Orange County government.
Said Crotty: “It’s still different than being sheriff by a lot.”
Demings, who also served as deputy county administrator for six years in charge of public safety, shrugged off Crotty’s doubts.
“It’s a job where nobody’s shooting at you. It’s not where you have to put your life on the line,” the lawman said.
Demings said his level of experience and prior responsibility was equal to or superior to his mayoral predecessors.
“Yes, it’s a big job, but Rich Crotty didn’t start with the experience I’m starting with and he got through it,” the sheriff said.
Since 1986, Orange County has operated as a “strong mayor” form of charter government, a reflection of the county’s urban character.
About 100 county employees are mayoral appointees, including the mayor’s management team, aides and advisers and department heads.
Demings will have additional opportunities to put his stamp on county operations as several high-level managers are set to retire, including Lalchandani, a 32-year veteran who has managed the day-to-day county operations for two decades under county leaders Mel Martinez, Crotty and Jacobs.
Also, after some recent key departures — notably the Convention Center’s executive director and the county corrections chief — Jacobs either appointed an interim official or left the position vacant “out of complete respect for the incoming mayor,” Jacobs said Thursday. Jesse Allen came out of retirement to be interim executive director of the Convention Center in January after Kathie Canning retired. When Cornita Riley stepped down as corrections chief in July, her post was not filled. Attorney Linda Weinberg was agreed to reprise a former role of deputy county administrator for a few months after Dr. George Ralls stepped down Aug. 10.
Others poised to leave are Animal Services Manager Dil Luther, Public Works Director Mark Massaro and Utilities Director Raymond Hanson, all of whom are in the Deferred Retirement Option Program, or DROP, which allows government employees to stay on for five years after retirement age, which is either 62 years old or 30 years of service.
Jacobs, 60, will go from being the county CEO to having most of the same duties as the eight School Board members but with the power to help set the board’s agenda and decide an issue in the event of a tie vote.
In the waning days of their campaigns, she and Demings bickered over the issue of school safety and whether to hire more deputies for school campuses.
Asked if she thought bitterness would linger between them, Jacobs said she hoped not.
“If either one of us isn’t capable of disagreeing on an issue — seriously disagreeing — and then moving on to the next issue and working cooperatively together, then there’s something wrong with the both of us if we can’t do that,” she said.
She said she called Demings on Tuesday night to congratulate him on winning.
“We talked very briefly,” she said. “Mainly I wanted to make sure he understood that whatever we needed to do to make the transition as smooth as possible that he could count on my help and support.”
Demings, too, believed the political foes could work together.
“That’s what you do if you have petty differences,” he said. “You get beyond them as professionals and we’re professionals.”
Demings’ experience in leadership roles for both Orlando and the county should serve him well in his new role, said Linda Chapin, the first person elected Orange County chairman.
She said he has served well in times of crisis, notably during the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in 2016 and during the 2004 hurricane season of Charley, Frances and Jeanne.
“I think Jerry is as wellpositioned to go into county government knowing how to do it than any of his predecessors,” said Chapin, who served from 1990 to 1998. “He goes to Orange County knowing most of the senior staff, knowing how it all works, knowing how the budget works.”
Under Chapin, the county built a new courthouse and the West Orange Trail, expanded the Orange County Convention Center and set the urban-service boundary at the Econlockhatchee River. She said she had no advice to offer Demings, a fellow Democrat.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for people to give advice to a new mayor, particularly when my own tenure was quite a few years ago,” she said. “He’s facing an entirely different community, different situation. He will bring his own talents to the role. I look forward to what he’s going to do in the job.”