It’s that time of year again: The Orange County government, home to Orlando, Disney World, and roughly 1.4 million souls, is hammering out a countywide budget for the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, 2023.
The $6.8 billion budget proposal, made publicly available on the county’s website, covers various public programs, agencies, and projects: from housing and community development to health services, transportation, arts and cultural affairs, and the corrections system.
As usual, there’s one agency that’s getting a particularly healthy amount of love in this budget proposal: the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, the third-largest law enforcement agency in the state of Florida.
Under the proposal, subject to county commissioners’ approval later this year, the OCSO would receive a $22.9 million boost to its operating budget, from $331 million this fiscal year to $353.9 million for the 2023-2024 fiscal year, running from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30, 2024.
That’s about a 7% increase — still less than the $32.4 million boost the agency saw to its budget last year, but up 20% from 2020, when OCSO was granted an operating budget of about $283 million.
Calls in 2020 by some police reform activists to defund law enforcement — meaning, shifting a portion of those funds to social and economic welfare programs — evidently went largely unheeded, both in Orange County and across the country.
(Although Orlando Weekly readers in 2021 did choose “defunding the police and investing in poor communities of color” as the “best use of public money” for our Best of Orlando awards.)
Democratic leaders in Florida — and in the federal government — have also shied away from the defund movement, arguing that law enforcement needs more money, not less, to address systemic issues within policing and better support public safety in their communities.
The state of Florida does a notoriously bad job of tracking crime stats, but the latest FBI data made publicly available for Orange County, shows violent crime at large decreased from 2019 to 2020, as did reported property crimes.
Reported homicides went up, however, while reported incidents of aggravated assault remained stable.
There are mixed findings on whether funding boosts for law enforcement agencies actually help, hurt, or make little use of taxpayer dollars in the name of public safety.
This year’s budget proposal from Orange County, in comparison, allocates just $14.6 million — a sliver of the OCSO budget — to the county’s Housing for All trust fund, which is meant to help fund affordable housing development amid a drastic shortage in supply.
We get it, everyone wants to move to the Sunshine State, or so a surge in the state’s population growth during the pandemic suggests.
The OCSO’s proposed budget for the 2024 fiscal year alone is more than double the $160 million county leaders have allocated for that Housing for All trust fund over 10 years, as part of the county’s 10-year action plan for addressing affordable housing issues.
Since 2019, when Mayor Jerry Demings first launched a Housing for All task force to come up with a plan, over 2,000 affordable housing units have been built or added in the county.
This year, the county also launched its Office of Tenant Services, meant to help aid tenants and landlords and enforce new tenant protections adopted earlier this year — which were even more recently preempted by a new state law.
In other words, Orange County’s tenant bill of rights and fair notice requirements — meant to help protect tenants from predatory landlords — are presumably no longer enforceable (a county spokesperson told Orlando Weekly Mayor Demings had “no response” the day that new law was given final approval by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis).
State Rep. Tiffany Esposito, one of the bill sponsors, however, confirmed to local Rep. Anna Eskamani on the House floor (who made an effort to ask) that the office itself wouldn’t be affected by that law, which is good news for locals.
Since the office’s launch, the county reports that staff have assisted 1,200 tenants and landlords in Orange County.
Although the office staff can’t offer legal advice or direct financial assistance, they can offer referrals and mediation help. And this comes at a time when homelessness in the Central Florida region is on the rise.
While rent hikes have largely leveled off, according to rental market data, local renters are still grappling with major rent increases in 2021 and 2022, as well as inflation and rising homeowners’ costs.
Those are things an extra $23 million to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office is unlikely to address (we’d like to be proven wrong, I guess?).
So, what is the sheriff’s office looking to do with its extra dough?
Over email on Tuesday, the agency declined to provide a breakdown to Orlando Weekly ahead of Sheriff John Mina’s planned presentation to the Board of County Commissioners and Mayor Jerry Demings, himself a former sheriff and police chief, tomorrow.
County leaders are holding two Budget Work Sessions this week: one on Wednesday, beginning at 9:30 a.m., and one on Thursday, beginning at 9 a.m.
Public comment will be accepted on Wednesday only, as the county considers the two-day affair “one continuous meeting agenda” — but there will be more opportunities for public input in September, a county spokesperson confirmed.
County documents, however, are more illuminating: According to the 388-page budget proposal, the OCSO is looking to add 54 new positions, including 34 sworn office positions and 20 civilian positions.
Sworn office positions include a new school resource officer, two SWAT operators, a new officer for their Behavioral Response Unit — a co-responder program launched in 2020 for answering mental health-related calls — and 25 sworn deputies, among others.
Civilian positions they’re looking to add range from Assistant General Counsel to a forensic firearm specialist and a parking enforcement officer.
They’re also looking to cover day-to-day operating costs: the cost of just keeping things running, essentially.
Orange County government
Screenshot of a description of operating expenses for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, detailed within the FY2024 budget proposal for Orange County, FL.
Those expenses include funding for body cameras and taser contracts, fuel, patrol vehicle leases, helicopter lease, radio replacements and other operating supplies, according to the proposal. Not to mention OCSO salaries.
“Ensuring the safety and well-being of our community is paramount,” wrote Mayor Demings, in summary of the proposed budget. “We have dedicated substantial funding to protect our community and enhance programs and services that support public safety.”
All in all, public safety — which includes the sheriff’s office, fire rescue (which generally gets less funds than the cops), corrections and more — is getting an $800 million commitment.
A Citizens Safety Task Force, first launched in 2020, then retired, then reconvened in the wake of a fatal shooting of three people in a single day in Pine Hills in February, has gotten a $2 million promise.
One hundred million has been earmarked for preserving, enhancing and restoring “environmentally sensitive lands,” and another $100 million has been allocated for improvements to the county’s transportation system, including sidewalks, roadway safety projects, bus shelters and more.
Combined, that’s still less than the budget for a single county agency.
The Orlando Police Department, covering a smaller jurisdiction, was granted a budget of $183.9 million this current fiscal year, representing 30% of the city’s total general fund. The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, the second-largest law enforcement agency in the state, was granted a full budget of $549.9 million, including $369.5 million from the countywide general funds alone. Neither of those agencies were defunded post-2020, either.
“We will continue to invest in economic development, affordable housing, environmental preservation, public safety, children and family programs, and transportation,” Demings added. “By leveraging these investments and working collaboratively with our residents, businesses, and community partners, we are confident in our ability to shape a prosperous and vibrant future for Orange County.”
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