By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
Broward Sheriff Dr. Gregory Tony wants the State of Florida to force Broward County to give him a hefty budget increase. He wants it so badly that on Tuesday he and a team of his top brass will be in Tallahassee to appeal the county’s partial denial of his unprecedented billion-dollar-plus proposal.
While state law grants county commissions broad discretion to set budgets for the constitutional officers they fund, including sheriffs, Tony seems wired to win.
The Florida Administration Commission, which will decide the matter, is chaired by Gov. Ron DeSantis, an ally who originally appointed Tony as sheriff seven years ago and has stood by him despite Florida Department of Law Enforcement findings that Tony lied under oath to obtain a Florida driver’s license, lied about his prior LSD use on an application to become a police officer in Coral Springs and failed to disclose his arrest for murder as a juvenile in Philadelphia when applying for jobs as a police officer and to the governor before his appointment as sheriff. Tony was acquitted.
The other three commission members are in DeSantis’s Cabinet: Attorney General James Uthmeier, DeSantis’s former chief of staff; Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia and Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson. The meeting can be viewed live online at 9 a.m. on The Florida Channel.
If Tony succeeds, as much as $73.7 million in county funds could be diverted to BSO and taken away from other county needs this fiscal year. That’s the so-called “funding gap” Tony has identified since the county trimmed his requested overall budget increase of nine percent – to $1.009 billion – to just over three percent, or $935.34 million in September.
Yet a close look at BSO’s budgets, most hundreds of pages long, that Tony’s office puts out to the public each year shows they’re peppered with numbers that often literally don’t add up.
TENS OF MILLIONS IN BSO BUDGET DISCREPANCIES
A Florida Bulldog review found the sheriff’s adopted budgets for BSO’s Department of Law Enforcement Services (DLE) contain tens of millions of dollars in discrepancies when “revenues collected and budgeted” are compared with the detailed expenses provided for its police service contracts with a dozen municipalities, the county’s international airport, Port Everglades and the sheriff’s Regional Communications Division. Also included are the revenue and expense numbers for DLE’s Special Details Unit which, for a fee, contracts with local businesses and governmental agencies to provide deputies for extra duty work handling security at events.
Tens of millions in additional budget discrepancies were found when comparing the Department of Fire Rescue’s revenues to the detailed expense pages for contracted services provided to eight municipalities, Port Everglades and the aviation rescue unit. The Fire budget tables are below. This story, however, will focus on BSO’s policing contracts.
The two most recent fiscal years where “actual” dollar amounts are provided in BSO’s published budgets are 2022-2023 and 2023-2024. In those two years, the discrepancies for DLE police services totaled $29.3 million. Fire and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) budget discrepancies in the same two-year period amounted to $25.3million – swelling all discrepancies for BSO contract services in those two fiscal years to $54.6 million.
One of the largest single discrepancies we found involves BSO’s Special Details Unit. The adopted budget book for the current fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, 2026 states the unit’s “actual” revenue in fiscal year 2023-2024 was $9.74 million, or more specifically $9,738,103. But the backup information that details the unit’s expenses, largely for personnel, totals $4.85 million – a difference of $4.88 million. To make understanding even more difficult, last year’s 2024/2025 budget lists the prior year’s budget as $10.5 million.
We asked Broward County’s Independent Auditor Bob Melton about that discrepancy and others. (Melton’s office does not audit BSO.) He gave us his observations but did not conduct an audit.
“Our understanding is that contracted services should be provided at actual cost, whereas this information appears to show revenues are exceeding costs by several million dollars for special [detail] services,” he said. “However, keep in mind that cost can be defined in several different ways. For example, one could only include direct costs, or cost could also include allocation of central services, etc.”
Al Lamberti, a longtime BSO operations commander who also served as Broward Sheriff from 2007 to 2013, looked over the budget number comparisons.
” In light of the fact that BSO is appealing its budget request to the Governor and Cabinet members for a budget increase, these discrepancies are very concerning,” he said. “The total amount for two years could have funded the Sheriff’s alleged budget shortfall. As a former sheriff, I understand sound budgeting requires independent oversight, routine internal and external audits, and complete transparency, so that the public can have confidence on how their tax dollars are managed. An independent annual budget audit is required by state statute. All sheriffs have an obligation to protect the public, not only physically, but fiscally as well.”
Why don’t BSO’s numbers match up? Where did the money go? While the reason for those discrepancies and others indicates significant fiscal mismanagement, it does not necessarily mean there is any missing money or that there has been any fraud or theft of public funds. A forensic audit would be needed to make such a determination.
BSO’s Division of Internal Audit Services, part of the Office of Inspector General’s Office, handles all types of audits for the agency. BSO Maj. Barry Lindquist was promoted to IG last year, and has been an assistant IG since 2020, according to BSO’s website.
Lindquist did not return phone and emailed questions last week asking whether the IG’s office conducts financial audits of BSO’s budgets. (The IG’s annual report for 2023-2024, the only annual report published on its web page, states that it conducted 187 audits in 2023 and says four were completed. None of the four, as described in the report, involved BSO’s budget.)
Instead, Florida Bulldog’s inquiries were forwarded to BSO’s public information office, which said Friday it would “research” the matter.
The Inspector General’s Office touts its independence. But all that really means is that Lindquist is independent of BSO’s various department heads. Like most every BSO employee, the Inspector General serves at the pleasure of Sheriff Tony. He also reports directly and solely to him “to ensure audit-related activities and investigations are performed independent of any influence or direction” from anyone except the sheriff. That’s not exactly a confidence builder for the IG’s stated goal of “promoting both accountability and transparency.”
In his appeal to the state, Tony accused the county of supplying BSO with inadequate funding for years, and making “arbitrary and capricious” cuts to his current budget. Among other things, he argued those cuts are evidence of a lack of support for public safety. The sheriff has said repeatedly he wants to give pay hikes to deputies to fix “salary disparities” with other police agencies. His 75-page appeal contends that quick action is needed to ensure BSO’s ability to maintain public safety for Broward’s residents and visitors.
SHERIFF TONY VS. BROWARD COUNTY
The county’s 71-page reply, signed by County Attorney Andrew Meyers, defends its commitment to public safety, noting among other things that BSO receives more funding than any other county agency and accounts for 49.64 percent of its annual general, property tax funded budget. It also contends that Tony, an elected constitutional officer whose authority flows from the state’s constitution, did not adequately justify his enormous budget request to the county commission and has been less than honest in his public remarks about the dispute. For example, it contends BSO has received plenty of money for personnel raises, but the sheriff chose instead to divert those funds to other purposes.
Broward County also accuses BSO of “financial mismanagement,” citing Tony’s diversion of funds from salaries to cover cost overruns on capital projects, notably his pet project, BSO’s $73.7-million training center. The center, which opened in July 2024, was plagued by an $18.2-million budget overrun – beyond the county’s appropriation of $55.5 million – and was caused by numerous change orders initiated by the sheriff’s office without county approval, the response says.
The county’s assessment of Tony’s financial mismanagement does not mention any of the numerous discrepancies found by Florida Bulldog. Instead, it focuses on his handling of the training center fiasco, Tony’s use of “misleading” statements to the county commission to obtain helicopter funding and his “posturing and gamesmanship” amid the 911 call center staffing crisis in 2022-2023.
Some of the BSO budgetary discrepancies we found for the two fiscal years of 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 appear to advantage the sheriff’s office, meaning revenues from its police services contracts with its municipal customers exceeded the cost of providing those services. More often, though, BSO’s municipal customers appear to have come out ahead, with what they paid in their contracts being less than BSO’s costs – at least according to BSO’s faulty budget numbers.
The discrepancies are most readily apparent when looking at full year budget numbers. For example, the current adopted budget for 2025/2026 states that in 2023/2024 DLE’s contract services brought in revenue of $274,705,732. The previous year’s 2024/2025 budget, however, says that in 2023/2024 DLE collected nearly $20 million more in contract services revenue, or $294,373,310. It is anyone’s guess as to which number is correct.
BSO’s budget numbers are similarly out of whack for the DLE’s 2022-2023 budget. Its adopted budgets for 2025/2026 and 2024/2025 agree that DLE’s contract revenues were $259,525,849 in 2022/2023. But its 2023/2024 budget says the DLE’s contract revenues for 2022/2023 were $282,992,030 – a nearly $23.5 million difference.
The reported numbers for the sheriff’s municipal contracts, while containing numerous discrepancies, cut both ways as to whether the municipality or BSO came out ahead.
For example, according to BSO’s current 2025/2026 budget that ends Sept. 30 the “actual” revenues it collected from Oakland Park in 2023-2024 were $18.1 million and expenses were $17.9 million – or $214,316 on the plus side for BSO.
But the current budget’s numbers for 2022-2023 flip in Oakland Park’s favor. That year BSO’s revenue from Oakland Park was $17,172,399 and its reported cost to supply police services to that city was $17,195,497. Oakland Park came out ahead by $23,098.
Sheriff Tony’s appearance in Tallahassee Tuesday before Gov. DeSantis and his Cabinet, sitting as the Florida Administration Commission whose duties include resolving sheriffs budget appeals, will apparently be a first for a Broward sheriff.
Yet some police chiefs have wondered why, given BSO’s own large budget discrepancies, he’s appealing.
Said one Broward chief, “How can you ask for more money when your own numbers don’t add up?”
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