Ethics Panel Dismisses Complaint Filed Against Flagler Commissioner Andy Dance by Candidate Jones

Following an investigation triggered by a candidate for the Flagler County Commission, the Florida Ethics Commission on Wednesday found no probable cause that County Commission Chair Andy Dance misused his position for personal benefit, even when his wife was one of the county administrator’s executive assistants. 

“I appreciate the Commission on Ethics’ independent review and dismissal of the complaint,” Dance said in response. “Throughout my public service, I have taken my ethical responsibilities seriously. I will continue to serve the residents of Flagler County with integrity and transparency.”

Contacted today, Jones said she had no comment about the dismissal. 

Dance has been an elected official since his election to the School Board in 2008, maintaining a near-stellar reputation as a principled and ethically clear-eyed centrist for 18 years. 

The complaint was filed in late December by Anna Jones, a Zaun Trail resident in Palm Coast who has often bitterly criticized the County Commission for what she alleges to be inaction on complaints about the county airport. Jones subsequently qualified to be a commission candidate in District 4, where she is challenging incumbent Leann Pennington. (Dance has represented District 1 since 2020 and is not up for reelection this year). 

Ethics commission complaints are easy to file: there is no threshold or minimum evidentiary requirement for a filing, and the cost is minimal. Complaints can be politically motivated, especially around election time. 

Flagler County commissioners especially, along with members of the administration, have in the past been subjected to numerous such frivolous complaints, though the complaint against Dance is the first in many years. In previous cases of serial filings, the commission countersued complainants on charges of malicious disregard for the truth and won judgments to recover legal fees, which ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The fees have not been paid. 

Jones charged that Dance’s wife, Luci Dance, reported to County Administrator Heidi Petito as her executive assistant, while Petito reported to the commissioners. 

Luci Dance had previously worked for the City of Bunnell. In May 2014, when Dance was a School Board member, Luci was hired as an executive administrative assistant in the county administrator’s office, where she worked for three or four successive actual or interim administrators. In March, three months after the complaint was filed, she was transferred to Flagler County Fire Rescue, where she is Chief Michael Tucker’s executive assistant. The position she filled opened after an employee’s retirement. 

Jones noted in her complaint that in the commissioners’ 2025 evaluations of Petito, Dance rated her as exceeding expectations, while three commissioners found Petito not to meet expectations. 

Jones neither mentions that a fifth commissioner, Greg Hansen, gave Petito higher marks than did Dance, nor that Dance’s previous evaluations, like other commissioners before him or before the current, new majority of three that found Petito wanting, reflected strong support for Petito. Dance’s evaluations were more detailed and included more constructive criticism for Petito than did Hansen’s. 

Petito was all but fired earlier this year, opting to resign as an exit strategy. She has since taken a senior position with the clerk of court’s office. 

Jones said in her complaint that as chair Dance never notified fellow-commissioners that Petito’s contract renewal would renew automatically–as it did–without commission intervention. Dance never abstained from any votes regarding Petito’s evaluation, she said.

The Ethics Commission found the complaint to raise sufficient questions to warrant a preliminary investigation, which is not always the case: most of the time, the commission tosses complaints for lack of legal sufficiency. 

The investigation was brief–the report is barely seven pages long and consists mostly of laying out facts, with the rest of the document consisting of exhibits apparently submitted by Jones, including pages of evaluations. 

The investigation did not go further than preliminaries. 

“Addressing the implication that he would take, or would fail to take, some official action in his position as a Flagler County Commissioner to facilitate his wife’s continued employment as Executive Administrative Assistant to Administrator Petito,” the investigation reported, Dance “stated, ‘She’s been through three Administrators, so I don’t influence her position. She gets evaluated on her own, and has been evaluated with three different Administrators, and is highly competent in her job. She stands on her own. She was there before I became a Commissioner, so that’s all I can add. I mean there’s, there’s nothing to it.’”

The investigation found that commissioners, including Dance, followed normal procedures to evaluate Petito, and that Andy Dance was under no obligation to notify the rest of the commission that Petito’s contract was up for renewal. The investigation quoted Dance at a commission meeting noting that whether the commission discusses evaluations or not, the press–usually FlaglerLive–will report on local government executives’ evaluations regardless. 

Contract renewals have previously gone unremarked, and if they are to be remarked, it does not have to be the chair who makes a notification: any member of the board may do so. (At the School Board, for example, it was Lauren Ramirez, who is neither the chair nor the vice chair, who noted earlier this month that Superintendent LaShakia Moore’s contract was up for renewal, and that Ramirez wanted to discuss it.) 

Jones in her complaint raised issues with the county airport, a recurring concern for Jones. Neither the investigation nor the final report of the Ethics Commission gave those parts of the complaint any weight.