With sheriffs armed for a fight, champion needed for Amendment 10 repeal effort
Consider what happens when a mayor finds a police chief ’s performance unacceptable, as happened in Miami Gardens after the chief was arrested for solicitation, in Sanford after the Trayvon Martin shooting and in North Miami after an officer shot a behavioral therapist trying to protect an autistic man.
The mayor fires the chief and finds a top-notch replacement.
Why shouldn’t a county mayor or administrator get to do the same? Why should it take a governor having to step in and remove a sheriff, as Gov. Ron DeSantis did last week in suspending Broward Sheriff Scott Israel?
Yet because of an ill-advised constitutional amendment voters passed in November, all Florida counties will be required to elect their top cop by 2024. Broward and Palm Beach counties already do so, with mixed results. But Miami-Dade stopped electing its sheriff two decades ago because of endemic corruption. Now it must switch back.
The problems with Amendment 10 don’t end there. It also requires every county to create the office of an elected tax collector, a position now appointed in Broward.
It also requires every county to elect their elections supervisor, no matter that Miami-Dade’s appointed supervisor outshone her elected South Florida peers in the last election.
Even worse, the amendment makes the clerk of courts the county auditor and “custodian of all county funds,” except where otherwise provided by county charter or special law.
Broward’s county clerk, Brenda Forman, doesn’t have the financial wherewithal to oversee the county’s $2.5 billion investment portfolio. Before winning office in 2016, the former wife of retired clerk Howard Forman worked in the court’s traffic and misdemeanor division.
Amendment 10 should not stand. It needs a repeal effort, much like the one former Gov. Jeb Bush waged in 2004 to repeal the constitutional amendment voters passed four years earlier mandating a high-speed rail system.
For now, Volusia County is challenging Amendment 10 in court, arguing that it shouldn’t apply retroactively. Volusia appoints its tax collector, but elects its sheriff, property appraiser and supervisor of elections. But because these positions are not constitutional offices, the county controls their budgets. That rankles Volusia Sheriff Mike Chitwood, who called county council members “scumbags” for challenging the amendment. He promises the Florida Sheriff ’s Association will fight back hard.
In Broward, meanwhile, state Rep. Kristin Jacobs is proposing a bill to let the county administrator retain oversight of the county’s financial management, $2.5 billion investment portfolio and other funds. The portfolio is currently managed by a chief financial officer whose investment decisions helped contribute to the county’s AAA bond rating. Jacobs’ bill is meant to create the “special law” exception needed to keep the funds’ management where it is.
Supporters argue that 63 percent of voters supported Amendment 10 and the voter’s will should prevail. But they fail to note the political trickery pulled by the state Constitution Revision Commission to increase its appeal.
For example:
The amendment requires the Legislature to retain the state Department of Veterans Affairs, though no one ever talked about disbanding this popular department. It was simply a feel-good add-on to lure votes.
The amendment also changes the date of the annual legislative session in election years — a change the Legislature had already made.
And it requires the creation of “an office of domestic security and counterterrorism within the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.” You know where this is going. The department already has one.
The peanut in this shell game was the amendment’s fourth provision, which “ensures election” of a county’s sheriff, tax collector, property appraiser, supervisor of elections and clerk of circuit court. It targeted the eight home-rule counties whose charters dictate their structure of government, absent the dictates of Tallahassee.
Amendment 10 was pushed by a coalition of sheriffs and other officials, and sponsored by members of the revision commission who had significant conflicts of interest. One was a court clerk. Another was a sheriff. A third was an acting sheriff. Although the amendment does not affect their jobs directly, it increases the already substantial political clout of their statewide associations.
If this amendment stands, counties will have to create expensive bureaucracies that don’t now exist. And because they will be constitutional offices, county leaders will have little control over their spending. And if something goes really wrong, it will take the act of a governor to remove the elected leader.
The changes don’t take effect until 2024, so there’s time. But a champion is needed to organize a repeal effort.
The ability of counties to control their destinies — and safeguard their investments — depends on it.
Amendment 10 needs a repeal effort, much like the one former Gov. Jeb Bush waged in 2004 to overturn the constitutional amendment voters passed four years earlier that mandated a high-speed rail system.