In this corner: Gregory Tony.
In that corner: Broward County commissioners.
The sheriff of Broward County usually likes being the center of attention, but he can’t be enjoying this — and it’s about time.
The county that approves Tony’s annual budget has assembled a richly detailed 71-page account of his fiscal mismanagement, to the detriment of Broward taxpayers.
Mike Stocker/Sun Sentinel
Steve Bousquet, South Florida Sun Sentinel columnist.
The report documents years of excessive and arbitrary spending decisions by a twice-elected sheriff who now, as a reward for those mistakes, wants massively more money.
Most damning, the county shows how the Broward Sheriff’s Office, in recent years, has used budget trickery to move money approved for pay raises to building new projects, such as the infamous $74 million training center riddled with expensive cost overruns.
So while Tony poor-mouths the county over his underpaid work force, he repeatedly used personnel money for other things, including to promote himself.
He also left positions unfilled and spent the money elsewhere, the report shows.
“BSO has, year after year,” the county writes, “diverted funds from its personnel budget to pay one-time capital expenditures and other expenses. This diversion of funds is apparent from BSO’s end-of-year budget reconciliation reports that show BSO has consistently reduced the funds budgeted for its own personnel when compared to the county adopted budget.”
For fiscal year 2023, the diversions totaled $5 million, and by fiscal year 2025, for the year ending Oct. 1, they had ballooned to $19.7 million, the report said.
The county’s assertions were sent to the state Nov. 17. They are a strong rebuttal to the sheriff’s appeal, filed 10 days earlier with Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Cabinet, in which Tony asks for an additional $73.3 million that county commissioners had rejected as unjustified.
Further undercutting Tony’s case for more money, the county says nearly half of his request is not legal, because he provides some services under contract that are not statutorily required. Those include county fire-rescue, emergency 911 calls and protecting the airport and seaport.
On page after page, the county bats down Tony’s claims as “untrue,” “inaccurate,” “wrong” and “grossly unfair.”
A small but telling example involves emergency 911 dispatchers.
In this year’s budget, Tony requested money for 27 more positions, even though three years earlier, he agreed the dispatch system was “fully staffed.”
The report said it was the county’s action, not BSO’s, that improved E-911 staffing following a tragedy in which a three-month-old infant died in 2022 when multiple, frantic calls to 911 went unanswered.
Tony argues that the $834 million he will get this fiscal year from local property taxes, while vastly more than any other county agency, is not nearly enough, and that commissioners have paid “lip service” to public safety while short-changing the agency year after year.
Florida sheriffs can administratively challenge county spending decisions. Tony’s appeal, dated Nov. 7, is believed to be the most expensive petition of its kind in Florida history.
If the dispute ever gets to a hearing, which is questionable, it will be up to DeSantis and the three elected Cabinet members, all Republicans, to decide who’s right.
County Commissioner Steve Geller, who served in the Legislature for 20 years, said he doubts that DeSantis (who appointed Tony in 2019) wants to referee this fight between a Democratic sheriff and an all-Democrat county commission.
Geller said it’s more likely that the governor’s budget people will press both sides to settle for a smaller amount, possibly spread over multiple years, or ask a mediator to forge a compromise.
“They don’t want to be in the middle of this,” Geller said.
But Geller said a backroom deal seems unlikely because the two sides are so far apart.
“I don’t believe there’s any amount of money that we reasonably could give him that he would be satisfied with,” Geller told me.
The timing of Tony’s appeal could be a political problem — for him.
It would be the height of hypocrisy for DeSantis to force the county to write Tony a huge check, which must be paid from county property taxes, while the governor is running around Florida demanding that property taxes be abolished for homesteaded property owners.
The county’s report would not be complete without an accounting of how much money it has cost Broward taxpayers for Tony to plaster his name and degree all over BSO property. Adding his name alone cost $79,717, county auditors found.
The report concludes that spending increases should be decided by “actual, demonstrated need rather than on posturing and gamesmanship in anticipation of an eventual brokered compromise.”
Steve Bousquet is the Opinion Editor of the Sun Sentinel and a columnist in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. Reach him at sbousquet@sunsentinel.com or (850) 567-2240 and follow him on X @stevebousquet.