by David Ball
Staff Writer
An emergency memorandum of understanding between the City and the Clerk of Court’s office over millions of dollars in debated funds failed to get the supermajority vote needed to move out of the Finance Committee on Wednesday.
The agreement was the result of years of negotiations with Clerk of Court Jim Fuller over public funds earmarked specifically for information technology and represented a “fair compromise,” said Mayor JohnPeyton’s Chief of Staff Steve Diebenow, who was echoed by Council Auditor Kirk Sherman.
Even the majority of the five committee members present – Art Shad, Kevin Hyde and Jay Jabour – seemed to agree, but committee members Denise Lee and Stephen Joost dissented in the 3-2 failing vote over concerns of starting a bad precedent and a lack of public vetting.
“Why is this just coming before us now? This is a bad way to do business,” said Lee. “I don’t just drink the Kool-Aid that quick like some of us.”
Diebenow said the ordinance was brought forward now as an emergency action item so the City Council could approve it before the Jan. 18 meeting of the Duval Delegation, which Diebenow hopes will sponsor a J-bill effecting the change in the State Legislature.
The agreement pertains to the collection of certain county fees, particularly a $1.90 surcharge per court filing that is put into the Clerk’s Public Records Modernization Trust Fund and can be spent only on IT hardware, software, maintenance and repair. Diebenow said the fees add up to more than $2 million during a year.
According to Diebenow, Fuller has stated that his office should be entitled to administer those funds, while the City administration, which has been providing IT equipment and support, argued it is owed to the city.
Further disagreements exist over some of Fuller’s budget used for county functions, such as record keeping and court functions, which are made complicated by Jacksonville’s consolidated government.
“Clerks in most counties act as the CFO for the county and have much more broad authority than they do in Jacksonville,” said Diebenow. “The J-bill proposed splitting those (county and court) functions.”
In the proposed agreement, the portion of the Clerk’s budget utilized for county functions (about 20 percent) will be appropriated by the City Council, while the remainder relating to state court functions will be submitted for information only.
The City will also reimburse the Clerk for nearly $900,000 in security and storage fees paid in prior fiscal years and will work to reach a joint agreement about how to apportion those costs in the future.
The Clerk will remit filing fees to the City on a quarterly rather than annual basis, be subject to audit by the Council Auditor of both the county- and court-related functions and provide monthly reports on revenues to and expenditures from the trust fund, among other conditions.
“We’ll be treating him a little bit like an independent authority,” said Diebenow. “The only difference (in the agreement) really is this IT (spending) and this trust fund are matched up.”
Deputy General Counsel Ernst Mueller also signed off on the agreement as a favorable alternative to the matter being settled in court, most likely by the State Attorney General.
However, Joost worried the agreement would set a precedent for other constitutional officers to demand the rights to certain fees and funds, as well as the fact that the memorandum of understanding was binding law.
“It’s almost like the Craig (Field) extension,” he said. “The Council voted no to extend the runway, and then someone else down the road changed their mind.” Lee said she was more surprised that an agreement that apparently had been in the works for three years and was being written over the past six months didn’t go before Council until it required emergency action.
“We should have hearings on something like this,” she said. “This is just too much dollars and cents to let this go through.”