ORLANDO, Fla. – Orange County Comptroller Phil Diamond says he is being stonewalled by the supervisor of elections over documents related to a newly uncovered expenditure to a nonprofit in October.
However, Supervisor Glen Gilzean said he has turned over the documents, basically accusing Diamond and Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings of lying in a statement and social media post released Tuesday night.
Diamond told Orange County commissioners Tuesday that a confidential informant came to the comptroller’s office last week and gave what he called “a number of serious allegations” against Gilzean’s handling of office money.
Diamond only disclosed one of those allegations publicly, saying he felt it would be easy to prove: that on Oct. 2 or 3, a check or wire was sent to a Central Florida nonprofit equaling about $1.1 million.
However, Diamond says his audit team was unable to get bank statements related to the transfer when they went to the election supervisor’s office, and they have not received any documents yet.
“I would like to send a message, and if anybody is with that office I would ask that you take this message back to the supervisor, and that message is Mr. Supervisor, open the books. The people have a right to know how you’re spending their money,” Diamond said.
In a statement to News 6, Gilzean disputed Diamond’s claims, saying the records were provided to the comptroller on Monday.
Gilzean took it a step further, posting a screenshot of an email on social media that was purportedly from Gilzean to an auditor for the comptroller’s office. The email, dated Monday, Dec. 2, gives a post office tracking number for the documents and also includes them as an attachment.
Care to correct the record, Mr. Mayor? @OCFLMayor @occompt pic.twitter.com/RytuuGHse2
— Orange County, FL SOE (@OCFElections) December 3, 2024
A spokesperson for Orange County government issued the following statement to News 6:
“If you watched the meeting, you saw that Comptroller Phil Diamond asked for the records from the SOE and told the board his office received none as of today. There is no reason for the Mayor and the Board to doubt Comptroller Diamond.”
News 6 asked the Comptroller’s Office about Gilzean’s claims that he sent the files that were requested on Monday.
Diamond responded:
“Having seen the Supervisor’s post, we now understand why we did not receive this email. The email attachments exceeded our server’s file size limit and the email was rejected by the server. The Supervisor should have received a ‘non-delivery receipt’ indicating that his email did not go through
All that said, the quickest way for us to get these records will be for our auditors to pick them up from the Supervisor’s office. They will go over there tomorrow (Wednesday) to pick up the records."
You can watch the meeting on the Orange County government’s YouTube account. The discussion begins around the three-hour mark:
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.
Citing Diamond’s concerns, the commission voted on Tuesday to defer the monthly allocation the supervisor’s office would normally have gotten from the county.
In his statement, Gilzean warned the county against the move, saying he would go to court to get it back.
“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.
Diamond’s request is the latest volley in a back-and-forth between Supervisor of Elections Glen Gilzean and Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings and the commission over how the supervisor spent an estimated $4 million budget surplus in the 2023-2024 annual budget.
This $1.1 million would be in addition to the $1.9 million Gilzean gave to CareerSource Central Florida for training programs and another $2.1 million that was given to Valencia College to set up a scholarship.
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.
CareerSource has already returned the $1.9 million.
“For me, this isn’t about the merits of what he’s using the funds for,” Demings said. “If he had asked us to do that, and we were part of a decision-making process to say OK, those issues are issues for our community.”
The budget at the center of this fight between Gilzean and the county was created by Gilzean’s predecessor, Supervisor of Elections Bill Cowles, before he retired earlier this year.
That budget ended with the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
Cowles has been reticent to weigh in publicly about the issue.
On Tuesday, he released his first-ever statement:
“One of the hallmarks of my 35-year career as the duly elected Orange County Supervisor of Elections was to be a good steward of the taxpayers' monies. From Fiscal Year 2020 to Fiscal Year 2023, we returned over $6.7 million to the County taxpayers. Excess funds belong to the Board of County Commissioners, so they can put it to the best use for the people.”
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 been allocated almost half of the new annual budget.
The county commission last month directed its attorneys to look at a possible lawsuit to regain the money it says Gilzean allocated inappropriately. There was no update from county attorneys Tuesday on that effort.
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