Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
Given that state law requires salary increases for county and school district officials become effective each October 1 and July 1, respectively, and that the Florida Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research (EDR) annually calculates these increases, it warrants reviewing the latest figures.
The EDR webpage shows the following salary increases for Jefferson County’s elected constitutional officers and school district officials for Fiscal Year 2020-21, as set forth by the salary formula established in Chapter 145 of Florida Statues.
For clerk of circuit court, property appraiser, supervisor of elections, tax collector and superintendent of school, the salary is $104,835 each, representing an increase of $4,232 per officer, compared with their previous year’s salary.
For sheriff, the salary is $114,657, an increase of $4,627 from 2019.
For county commissioners, the salary is $29,739 per official, an increase of $1,210 each from the previous year. And for school board members, the salary is $27,748, an increase of $1,120 per member over the previous year.
Additionally, select constitutional officers can receive a special qualification salary of up to $2,000 annually upon their successful completion of a certification program in their special areas.
Those officers who are eligible for the certification are clerks of circuit court, sheriffs, supervisors of elections, property appraisers, tax collectors and school superintendents.
School superintendents can additionally complete a two-phase program offered by the Florida Department of Education that upon completion gets them another certification and a performance salary incentive of between $3,000 and $7500 annually.
Once certified, these officials must take continuing education courses to maintain their certifications.
The EDR notes that the practice of the state determining the compensation of Florida’s county constitutional officers was sanctioned by the Florida Constitution of 1885 and reaffirmed by the constitutional revisions of 1968.
It was not until 1973, however, that the Florida Legislature authorized the salary compensation formula that formed the precursor of today’s formula. Prior to the 1973 legislation, according to the EDR, the authorization to change county officers’ compensation required frequent and specific legislative actions.
Lawmakers’ intent for the 1973 formula authorization reportedly resulted from their determination that a uniform salary law was needed to replace the then existing method of determining compensation, which was locally based and often “haphazard, preferential, inequitable and probably unconstitutional,” according to the EDR.
Additionally, the EDR notes, it was the legislators’ intent to equally compensate county officials who had substantially equal duties and responsibilities by establishing uniform salary schedules based on countywide populations.
County and school district elected officials sometime claim that they have no choice in the matter of salary increases, as they are set by the Legislature. They fail to mention that most belong to professional associations that lobby for the raises on their members’ behalves. They also fail to mention that they have the option to decline the raises.
According to the EDR, despite the Legislature’s stated intent for uniformity of salaries, it has since relaxed the standard.
In 2009, according to the EDR, the Legislature authorized school board members and elected school superintendent to reduce their salaries voluntarily if they so chose. And in 2011, it expanded the authorization to county commissioners, clerks of circuit court, sheriffs, supervisors of election, property appraisers and tax collectors to reduce their salaries on a voluntary basis.
The only exceptions are county officials whose salaries are not set by the Legislature because theirs is a home rule charter county or a county with a chartered consolidated form of government, such as Duval County.
That’s because in charter counties, according to the EDR, voters are provided with a mechanism “to fundamentally alter the form of county government and the status of constitutional officers and their salaries.”
The method that the EDR currently uses to calculate the salaries of county and school district elected officials involves a complicated formula that takes into account the latest official population and a salary formula that contains five other components, several of them defined by state statute.
Traditionally, the salary calculations occur in August or September, in time for county governments to include the increases in their budgets for the coming fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. As for school districts, whose fiscal year begins in the summer, the increases don’t kick in until July 1.
Prior to 1984, the Florida Department of Community Affairs, which is now merged into the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, used to do the salary calculations for the constitutional officers. From 1985 through 2009, the former Legislative Committee of Intergovernmental Relations did the calculations for constitutional officers and elected school officials.
Starting in 2010, the EDR has been doing the calculations.