ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – Orange County Elections Supervisor Glen Gilzean filed a lawsuit Thursday after county commissioners voted to withhold payment from his office.
This is the latest in a back-and-forth between Gilzean, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings and the commission over how the elections supervisor spent an estimated $5 million from his taxpayer-funded budgets.
Earlier this week, county commissioners voted to defer the monthly allocation the supervisor’s office would normally have gotten from the county after Orange County Comptroller Phil Diamond cited new concerns over the use of funds.
The comptroller’s job is to ensure county money is being spent properly. The comptroller does an annual audit of county government offices, including the supervisor of elections office.
Diamond told Orange County commissioners Tuesday that a confidential informant came to the comptroller’s office last week about a $1.1 million payment for a grant program. Diamond would not disclose the name of the recipient.
Diamond was concerned because he said his audit team had tried to get documents related to the $1.1 million, including going down to the office and asking to speak to the supervisor, but said his team had been stonewalled and still didn’t have the documents.
It turned out that Gilzean had emailed them the day before, however, the attachments on the email were so big that the email bounced back, so Diamond never got it.
The $1.1 million was in addition to two contracts Gilzean signed before the end of the budget year, giving out $4 million.
He made a $1.9 million deal with CareerSource Central Florida to retrain temporary election employees, among other things, as long as CareerSource incorporated voter outreach into those programs. He also signed a contract with Valencia College to establish a $2.1 million scholarship for students from Jones and Evans high schools pursuing a cybersecurity program that was also supposed to boost youth civic engagement.
CareerSource has already returned the $1.9 million.
The money Diamond asked the county commission to defer comes from the new annual budget, which Gilzean crafted and started on Oct. 1. Diamond said Gilzean had already allocated almost half of that budget.
Gilzean alleges in the lawsuit that withholding his office’s funds violates Florida law and could lead to workers not getting paid, potentially setting up the supervisor’s office to be sued. The lawsuit demands the rest of the funding for December and for the rest of the 2024-25 fiscal year budget.
“Withholding almost $1 million from the office will mean staff and vendors may not be paid and damage the office heading into a pivotal transition and set of municipal elections. If the county goes through with this, our office will be compelled to file for an emergency writ of mandamus, which we will win, and compel the county to follow the law,” Gilzean said in a statement earlier this week.
Neither Gilzean nor Demings would comment directly on the lawsuit.
Gilzean has defended the expenditures, saying the $4 million came from a surplus that was left over in the last budget because the Democrats didn’t hold a presidential primary, and the turnout for the August primary was poor.
The county says that surplus money should be returned to the county general fund, or should have been spent to shore up the November election.
Gilzean says that while the county has a right to approve decisions on some aspects of the budget, because Gilzean is a constitutional officer, the county does not have the right to dictate how he spends money within each budget category.
Gilzean filed for an emergency hearing to get the money released right away. That hearing should be happening in the next few days.
News 6 legal expert Steve Kramer believes Gilzean has a good chance of winning.
“Right now, we have not had a public release that would explain or justify withholding that money. And unless there is something that comes out of that hearing that is compelling that gives an exception to the statutory prescription then I think that the supervisor has a very high likelihood of prevailing in that hearing,” Kramer said.
Read the full lawsuit below:
Gilzean Lawsuit by News 6 WKMG-TV on Scribd
On Monday evening, News 6 spoke with both Gilzean and Diamond.
We asked Diamond if it was legal for Gilzean to use any of the 4.3 million dollars for his payroll.
”... Well, we’d need to take a deeper dive on that and look at the records. But that’s why you have operations. The money is to pay your employees.” Diamond told News 6.
“Phil Diamond, stop misleading the people,” Gilzean told News 6 reporter Laverne McGee. “Stop misleading the county commission and release our funds. You have received all the documents every step of the way. They’ve constantly asked for paperwork, and we provided it all along. And now they’re constantly moving the goalposts because they do not want to fund our office according to the law. This is a political witch hunt at the taxpayer’s expense.”
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