Two Elections and ‘Record’ Flagler Voter Registrations Adds Costs to Elections Supervisor’s Budget

Flagler County Elections Supervisor Kaiti Lenhart told the County Commission this morning that the presidential year’s two elections, a record rate of voter registration, inflation and a spate of new legal requirements are adding costs to her office’s budget, which she presented to the county at a workshop.

The budget presentation was part of the customary budget workshop devoted to the county’s constitutional officers, whose budgets are financed through county revenue and are therefor submitted to the commission for approval. That gives commissioners oversight authority that may at times include a bit of a tug of war between what a constitutional officer requests and what the commission is willing to approve.




Four of the five constitutional officers are submitting budgets–the Supervisor of Elections, the Sheriff, the Property Appraiser, and the Clerk of Court. The Tax Collector’s budget is fee-based. The court budgets collectively will increase from $47.75 million to to $54.86 million, or just over $7 million (14.9 percent), the majority of that in the sheriff’s budget.

There were some disagreements between the supervisor and the county today, with the county administrator rather than commissioners highlighting the biggest difference, and the supervisor differing on definitions rather than substance.

As submitted, the supervisor’s budget calls for a 29.6 percent budget increase, to $2.7 million. County Administrator Heidi Petito presented it as a 52.4 percent budget increase, however. “If you back out the one-time enhancement that was provided, I believe it was for equipment,” the administrator said of a $319,236 allocation in the current year, “it’s actually showing an increase over last year’s adopted budget of $1.8 million to the requested 2.7 million. That’s an increase of $949,000 or 52.4 percent increase.” (The increase does not reflect $116,000 unspent dollars the supervisor returned to the county.)

Lenhart’s interpretation differed sharply.




“The one time enhancement really just made my budget whole when the millage was adopted. My budget was $319,000 short of what we needed for operating in order to conduct the ’22 general election,” Lenhart said. “So I don’t think that the ‘one-time enhancement’ language should be continued to be used. In fact that whole pro rata share, budget process doesn’t really work for us–the 1 percent increase for my portion of the countywide budget is just not sufficient to meet the needs of the county.”

When county revenue is projected to increase due to rising tax valuations, constitutional budgets get a pro-rated, proportional increase in their budgets. Taxable values rose by just under 13 percent coming into this budget year, yielding what may be substantial new revenue for local governments, depending on where they set their tax rates.

The county now has just under 99,000 registered voters and is expected to have its 100,000th registered voter in the next few months, with new legislative mandates burdening supervisor of elections with substantial new requirements: all-new precinct supplies, all-new registration cards and paperwork, annual culling of the registration roll, new equipment. “People registering to vote at record numbers in our county,” Lenhart said. (Most of the requirements were in Senate Bill 7050. See a summary of the new requirements in the first two pages of this legislative analysis.)

“There could be costs related to that, that are not realized here in this budget because my budget is due May 1 and the bill was passed on April 27,” Lenhart said. The bill goes in effect on July 1. The supervisor is looking at the March presidential primary and the August primary in the coming budget. The general election would be part of the following year’s budget.




“That’s why you’re seeing those increases in elections, operating, elections personnel: All of that is doubled, basically for the two elections,” Lenhart said. There have already been 22,000 vote-by-mail requests for the presidential primary. (Among a series of voting-rights restrictions approved by the Florida Legislature in recent years is the new requirement that voters renew their vote-by-mail applications every two years. Previously, no such renewal was necessary. The renewal request is an attempt by lawmakers to dampen vote-by-mail enthusiasm, which has generally favored Democrats in the last few elections. The Legislature is dominated by Republicans.)

Asked by Commissioner Leann Pennington whether the supervisor anticipated needing more money because of Senate Bill 1750, Lenhart said “hopefully not,” hinting at the morning’s discomfort: “I really don’t want to come back to you. I really, really, really don’t.” But she won’t know until the end of July because the state is still writing rules based on the new law. Those rules may carry costs.

Commissioners Andy Dance and Dave Sullivan was also curious about the consequences of recent bills and subsequent litigation over those bills. Even Senate Bill 1750 is in court. “They could throw everything out. Or it could be in effect for us for 2024. There’s no way to tell right now,” Lenhart said.




Health insurance, retirement, a 5.3 percent cost of living increase being awarded to all county and constitutional employees, and the request for one additional employee are other costs adding to the supervisors’ budget. “But again, that one time enhancement, the 52.4 percent, I don’t agree with that as being a number that’s even related to my budget,” Lenhart said. “The budget as adopted would have been the requested amount, including that enhancement.”

Petito and the supervisor’s office are still working through differing health insurance numbers. “We had some concerns with the personnel side of this budget, but there isn’t sufficient detail to break it out,” Petito said. “We had an issue on the medical side, we had an issue on the [Florida Retirement System] side. It appears that it may be overinflated by error, not necessarily intentional but by error, and we’re trying to clarify that with their office.”