This, despite concern over runaway spending.
By Derek Gilliam/Suncoast Searchlight
Original Air Date: August 22, 2025
Host: Despite tough talk from Sarasota County commissioners, this year’s final budget workshop ended with little progress on curbing spending. Derek Gilliam with Suncoast Searchlight has the report.
Derek Gilliam: Commissioners met Tuesday where they spent four hours in a cramped room hearing constitutional officers explain why their budgets should remain intact, with the commissioners failing to ask any of the agencies to cut more than what they had proposed last month.
That comes after years of ballooning budgets with the county’s proposed spending expected to top $2.5 billion in Fiscal Year 2026.
The two departments with the largest increases—the sheriff’s office and the tax collector—skipped the workshop altogether. And, rather than reduce his budget, Tax Collector Mike Moran informed commissioners ahead of the meeting that he would increase it—surpassing his previous projection.
Sarasota County commissioners met for four hours Tuesday reviewing the Fiscal Year 2026 budget. Image from Sarasota County video.
In addition, Moran’s office uncovered what he said was a long-running mistake that will result in the county sending Sarasota County Schools a nearly $600,000 bill for tax collection costs this year—a move that could deepen the district’s own budget crisis.
Frustrated by the lack of progress, commissioners vowed to revamp the budget process starting next year by kicking off workshops in February instead of March and capping budget requests at 1.6%—instead of the historical average of 5.9%.
Sarasota County Commissioner Ron Cutsinger at the budget workshop Tuesday. Image from Sarasota County video
Commissioner Ron Cutsinger said, “We’ve got to take a very serious approach and set expectations going forward. We’re going to be facing some serious decisions,” adding that he did not believe county finances were in a crisis.
Still, he acknowledged times could get tough in the coming years.
The workshop was scheduled after commissioners realized this summer they were running headlong into a looming deficit.
They had directed County Administrator Jonathan Lewis to ask all department heads and constitutional officers to find ways to trim their requests.
Few concessions followed.
State Attorney Ed Brodsky told commissioners Tuesday he needed two new positions on top of what his office had requested in July. Commissioners agreed to fund an additional 1.5 positions after Brodsky voluntarily trimmed his ask.
Sarasota County Public Defender Larry Eger appearing Tuesday at the county budget workshop. Image from Sarasota County video
Public Defender Larry Eger spent less than three minutes at the table with not a single commissioner pressing him to pare back his roughly 10% budget increase.
Chief Medical Examiner Russell Vega justified his 8.7% increase by pointing to lease obligations and property tax passthroughs—costs that will vanish next year once the county buys the building.
Commissioner Teresa Mast said the commission needed to be more direct with the agencies requesting money, comparing the current approach to a thermometer taking the room’s temperature. She said they need to be more like a thermostat.
Mast said, “You say, ‘this is what we’re going to be.’ So you dictate how that’s going to occur.”
Commissioner Tom Knight said the county is already in deep trouble, pointing to the recalcitrant responses and an inability to reduce spending by even this year’s $20 million hole.
Tom Knight said, “I think if we don’t start preparing for it now, then we’re just kicking the can, and we’re going to make it harder on ourselves in the future.”
While failing to reduce the budget by any significant degree this year, all five commissioners supported capping spending in Fiscal Year 2027 at 1.6%. That would increase to 3.6% in the 2028 through 2030 budgets.
Spending at that level would eliminate future shortfalls and see the county begin to build back depleted reserves.
That’s likely to be a tough battle in future years given current budget trajectories.
Over the past five years, every elected leader in the county has asked for average increases of at least 6%. The largest driver of what the commission funds comes from the sheriff’s office which, over the past five years, has increased its budget by about $90 million.
Sarasota County Commissioner Tom Knight at Tuesday’s budget workshop. Image from Sarasota County video
Knight told the other commissioners, “I think it looks good on a PowerPoint. I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
Current budget issues don’t include a push by Moran to reduce what his office turns over to the county in unspent funds each year. Historically, the tax collector has returned $15 to $20 million to the county’s general fund, with Moran promising to return nothing in future years.
Moran’s effort to change longstanding operations didn’t stop there—it also extended to the way his office handles school district taxes.
Before the workshop, which he skipped, Moran sent letters to Administrator Lewis and School Superintendent Terry Connor saying his office had uncovered a 23-year mistake: The county had been paying to collect the school district’s voter-approved millage, a cost that should have been the district’s responsibility. Last year alone, those fees totaled $589,556.
Under state law, counties cover only collection costs for non-voter-approved property taxes, meaning the district must now pay its own bill.
Sheriff Kurt Hoffman, another no-show, had the largest cut in spending from his more than $220 million budget. The reduction of $2.4 million represented an about 1% decrease as he plans to fund about 30 new positions next year.
Knight was the only commissioner who proposed asking the sheriff’s office to do more, pointing to what Manatee county commissioners requested earlier this month. There, commissioners facing their own revenue crunch asked Sheriff Rick Wells to trim his budget request by 3%—about $8.5 million this year.
Finding no appetite to challenge the sheriff’s increases, Chairman Joe Neunder shut down the discussion and moved on.
Neunder said, “I don’t see anybody else here at the moment that really wants to talk about it.”
Reporting for Suncoast Searchlight, Derek Gilliam. To read the full story, go to suncoastsearchlight.org/sarasota-county-budget-ends-school-bill.
This story was produced by Suncoast Searchlight, a nonprofit newsroom of the Community News Collaborative serving Sarasota, Manatee, and DeSoto counties. Learn more at suncoastsearchlight.org.
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