Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz is asking Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet to intervene and force the county’s mayor and commissioners to give her agency more tax dollars.
Carl Juste
cjuste@miamiherald.com
Miami-Dade’s sheriff will ask Gov. Ron DeSantis to force the county to spend $42 million more on the Sheriff’s Office, saying the $1.2 billion budget from the county’s mayor fell short of what the agency needs.
Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz announced the planned appeal Friday night to Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state Cabinet, exercising a budget maneuver available to sheriffs under Florida law.
“Miami-Dade County does not have to choose between public safety and higher taxes or fewer services,” Cordero-Stutz said in a statement. “Miami-Dade County can fully fund law enforcement without either, and through the appeal, I will show exactly where the savings are.”
Now the mayor and sheriff will be engaged in a high-profile fight over a budget that takes effect Oct. 1 with cuts in bus service to close revenue gaps in the county’s transit system. The appeal goes to the governor and cabinet, which is made up of the state’s attorney general, chief financial officer and agriculture commissioner.
This is the latest skirmish between Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, a term-limited Democrat, and Cordero-Stutz, a first-term Republican expected to seek reelection in 2028. Earlier this month, the two had a public spat hours after the crash of a cargo jet at Miami International Airport, when an open mic captured the sheriff rejecting a request by a Levine Cava aide to have the mayor speak first at a press conference.
If successful, Miami-Dade will be forced to redo its 2027 budget to comply with the Cabinet’s funding decision, pulling operating dollars from roughly $4.4 billion in mostly property taxes and sales taxes that fund services like police, jails, parks and transit.
The overall county budget is $14.3 billion, but that includes billions from Miami International Airport passenger fees, water and trash bills and other revenue sources that aren’t available for general government services.
Miami-Dade County Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz at a Miam-Dade budget hearing on Thursday September 17, 2026, as Mayor Daniella Levine Cava looks on. Pedro Portal pportal@miamiherald.com
The appeal to Tallahassee has Cordero-Stutz demanding more property-tax dollars from county coffers for public safety at a time when she is rejecting warnings from fellow sheriffs across Florida that a statewide cut in property taxes will hurt public safety.
On Tuesday, Cordero-Stutz posted on social media a supportive statement on Amendment 3, the DeSantis-backed referendum to cut property taxes that is opposed by the Florida Sheriff’s Association. Hours later, DeSantis made his own post praising Cordero-Stutz for “for calling out those who are fear-mongering regarding Amendment 3.” Cordero-Stutz also recently hired the governor’s head of state law enforcement, Mark Glass, to serve as the No. 2 administrator in her department.
In her budget presentation earlier this month, Cordero-Stutz told commissioners she needs the extra dollars to recruit more deputies, expand staffing and build new Sheriff’s Office stations. Her full request amounted to a 12% increase in tax funding for the Sheriff’s Office, twice the 6% increase recommended by Levine Cava. The Levine Cava plan for the Sheriff’s Office adopted by the Republican-majority County Commission, with roughly $12 million added in the hours before the final budget vote.
Levine Cava and her staff made the case that the Sheriff’s Office was trying to fund a recruiting pace that was far higher than the amount of hiring the agency had recorded this year — or in the years when it was the Miami-Dade Police Department before a change in Florida law gave the county an elected sheriff early last year. Levine Cava argued the hiring pace couldn’t be met, meaning the Sheriff’s Office was asking for money than it needed on top of the record amount of tax dollars the mayor proposed for the countywide police force. “We did it because of the fundamental value of public safety,” Levine Cava said.
In her statement, Cordero-Stutz said she’ll be suggesting where Levine Cava can find the money for the Sheriff’s Office. That could have the sheriff highlighting perceived frills in the budget’s sprawling spending plan, which includes $500,000 for a parade and $5 million extra in mostly property taxes to subsidize large events, like a NASCAR race.
But the sheriff will face claims that to generate anything close to the extra $42 million she wants, Miami-Dade would need to make substantial cuts to services that voters want.
“We will make those cuts,” Commissioner Oliver Gilbert, a Democratic candidate for Congress, told Cordero-Stutz near midnight during the marathon budget hearing on Sept. 17. “And we will tell everybody that these are the cuts that were made by the sheriff.”
This story was originally published September 26, 2026 at 9:50 AM.