Sarasota County votes out its last remaining Democratic elected official
By Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: November 6, 2024
Host: The closest partisan race in Sarasota brought us Mike Moran as the next Tax Collector. We are looking at Moran’s recent clashes with tax collectors in Florida, and his role at the PACE funding agency.
Johannes Werner: Yesterday, Sarasota voters elected Mike Moran as county tax collector. They did so by the narrowest margin in any of the local races — beating nine-time incumbent Barbara Ford-Coates with 51.27% of the vote. Ford-Coates was the only Democrat holding a countywide elected position.
Mike Moran
During his campaign, Moran made only rare public appearances, and he did not specify what he would or would not do, if elected. If he follows up on what he told the Herald-Tribune earlier this year, he will now resign as the head of the PACE Funding Agency. PACE stands for Property Assessed Clean Energy. It is a state agency that offers home improvement loans to make them more energy efficient. Moran made close to $200,000 a year, plus performance bonus as its executive director. He also created controversy with his lavish spending — more than $30,000 in 18 months — wining a dining not only private lender executives, but his own political buddies and their spouses.
But the biggest controversy during Moran’s tenure with PACE came when the agency prompted a lower-court ruling that allowed it to override local consumer protections of Florida counties — including those of Sarasota County — essentially operating throughout Florida without local oversight. That all happened when Moran was chair of the county commission. The Florida Tax Collectors’ Association appealed that court ruling, and the case is now before the Florida Supreme Court.
Moran called the tax collectors “rogue” for challenging the state agency. But the Florida Attorney’s Office disagrees, weighing in with a legal brief backing the tax collectors’ argument. At issue is the fact that the loans are attached to the homeowners’ tax bill, with a very high interest rate. That makes the counties, in effect, the chief enforcers for the private lenders.
One of Moran’s leading critics is fellow Republican Mike Fasano, a former state senator who now serves as tax collector in Pasco County. Here’s how Fasano put it in an interview earlier this year with Channel 8 WFLA:
Mike Fasano: They now provide these loans to thousands and thousands of homeowners to get a new roof, a new air conditioner; Has 
to be something that’s going to be for the purpose of wind mitigation.
The interest rates are very high. There’s no collateral because it’s on your tax notice, so you don’t pay your tax notice. What happens is, eventually your home’s gonna get auctioned by the clerk of the court. So these investors are guaranteed their money. But the killer is that a lot of people were not realizing what they were getting themselves into until they got that tax notice.
JW: PACE loan borrowers do not have to pass income qualification requirements — in other words, they don’t have the ability to repay the loan. The yearly PACE bill comes to borrowers once a year, with their homeowners’ tax bill. Because it is attached to the tax bill, if a borrower falls behind, the PACE debt jumps ahead of their mortgage payment. So this is a very safe investment, both for the private lenders and the investment funds that bundle these loans on Wall Street.
It is less so for homeowners. In Charlotte County, people with PACE loans have a much higher delinquency rate than average homestead owners. In Palm Beach County, more than 300 homes have fallen behind on loan payments. In Pasco County, just north of Tampa, close to 300 homes were delinquent on their taxes as of a few months ago, because of the PACE program. Twenty-four homes have been sold at auction because their owners couldn’t pay property taxes.
Charles Bear, who lost against Moran in the Republican primaries, worked in the Charlotte County tax collector’s office. He described the problem, in a recent interview on The Detail on WSLR.
Charles Bear: Most of these ideas sound good until you realize that it’s sold as a monthly cost or a monthly expense, but your tax bill is annual. It’s not monthly. So it’s sold as $150 a month. But it’s not $150 a month. And most of these people that are taking advantage of these programs are on fixed incomes and they don’t have the means to come up with that all at once in November.
Furthermore, many of these individuals are on the installment plan and the installment plan does allow for quarterly payments of your real estate taxes. However, the first two installments are based on the prior year’s taxes. Not the amount that includes the new PACE amount. So that means the final two installment payments have to make up the difference and one half of whatever that assessment was is going to be due two times. And they just don’t have the means to pay. I’ve had elderly women in my office literally crying across the desk from me, wondering how they’re going to come up with the money to pay this loan. And they didn’t understand what they were signing up for.
JW: Sarasota County first voted to let PACE in a few years back, on a narrow three-to-two vote. Back then, the county created a specific agreement, but the 2022 court ruling overrode that, in the case that’s now before the Florida Supreme Court. In Sarasota County, 257 homeowners have taken on PACE loans so far.
The county commission, chaired by Moran, recently voted to enter a new agreement with PACE. Next, the commission will have to enter into agreements with the Sarasota Property Appraiser — and with the Tax Collector. The tax collector then has a choice, according to Bear, to reject taking on enforcement of any new loans.
CB: It’s being sold by individuals in a manner to take advantage of individuals. They know how to push the right buttons and say the right words to make it sound like it’s a really great plan. “Oh, and it’s government funded, and this, that” — it’s not government funded. And the government isn’t behind this. The Sarasota County isn’t behind this. They’ve allowed it to take place. This new commissioner, like yesterday, the commissioner said, “Yes, we’re gonna enter into an agreement again.” Okay, that’s great. They still have to enter into an agreement with Bill Furst, and they still need to enter into an agreement with Barbara Ford Coates. And I hope that Barbara Ford Coates says, “That’s nice that you are allowed to operate in Sarasota County,” but I hope she says, “No, I’m not going to collect the new assessments.” She has to collect all the old assessments under the old programs. Unfortunately, you can’t stop collecting the old ones, but she can say no to collecting the new ones.
JW: We could not verify whether that decision is now in the hands of Moran.
The morning after Moran’s electoral win, his name still appeared on the PACE agency’s website as executive director. We were trying to seek comment about the Sarasota County agreement and his relationship with PACE, but neither Moran nor the agency returned calls by WSLR News before deadline.
Johannes Werner, reporting for WSLR News in Sarasota.
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