Tax Collector Moran sends letter to county administrator and schools superintendent, citing need for clear direction forward
Acting on a motion that Sarasota County Commissioner Tom Knight put forth, the board members voted on May 5 to rescind their Aug. 19, 2025 vote that allowed Sarasota County Tax Collector Mike Moran to charge the Sarasota County School Board a $589,556 commission for collecting the revenue generated by a voter-approved, special 1-mill tax for the school district.
County Administrator Jonathan Lewis explained during the commission’s budget workshop that summer day that he had included that commission in the county’s 2026 fiscal year budget, as the county had been covering that expense.
That special school tax has been in effect since 2002. It pays for programs that the district otherwise could not afford, as explained in the relevant referenda resolutions that the School Board has approved over the years.
The May 5 motion included direction to staff to provide the board options to recover the money, perhaps through an interlocal agreement among the county, the School Board and the Tax Collector’s Office.
As Chair Ron Cutsinger put it: “Whatever is necessary to accomplish [that recovery of the funds].”
Commissioner Joe Neunder seconded Knight’s motion, and it ended up passing on a 3-2 vote, with Cutsinger and Commissioner Teresa Mast opposing it.
On a second motion, Knight called for any commissions already held by the Tax Collector’s Office out of the School Board revenue to “be refunded to the School Board.” He acknowledged, “I don’t know if we have any authority over that … but I would want to be on the record that that money be returned to the School Board,” if such commissions have been collected.
Again, Commissioner Neunder seconded the motion.
“Certainly,” Knight said, “the School District needs total confidence in the community that the money’s being spent the way the voters wanted the money spent.”
Neunder added, “I just hope, as we move forward, we never find ourselves in a position like this again. My hope is that the dialogue, transparency and communication with all invested parties here [will resolve the issues].” He stressed, “[Children] are the most precious resource in our community.”
County Administrator Lewis said that he and his staff would work with Tax Collector Moran and leaders of the School District “to try and assist the two of them as they work through that …”
That motion passed unanimously.
Knight did discuss one other, potential motion, but he did not proceed with it. That would have called for “a third party, non-biased outside authority” to determine the actual expense of the Tax Collector’s Office’s handling of the School Board revenue from the special tax.
“I know the tax collector is an independent constitutional officer, and that probably protects him from how much we can see of his budget,” Knight said. “But I will be on the record, that before I ever vote again on allowing this [commission] to go forward, that I will want to see an in-depth accounting of how much extra operating cost” is necessary to deal with the School Board funds.
In response to a Sarasota News Leader request for comments regarding the board action this week, attorney Daniel J. DeLeo, with the Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick firm in Sarasota, wrote of his concern that even with the reversal of the County Commission’s position on the commissions paid to the Tax Collector’s Office, a newly reconstituted County Commission, in the aftermath of the November General Election, could undo that reversal.
DeLeo added in a May 5 email, “There’s also the matter of the more than $2 million the tax collector took illegally and without justification.” He was referencing the $2,055,798.65 in commissions that Moran had diverted from the School Board through March 12, 2026, as detailed in a 12th Judicial Circuit Court complaint that DeLeo filed against Moran, in Moran’s official capacity, on behalf of the School Board and two county residents on April 24. (See the related article in this issue.)
“The county commission does not control what a constitutional officer like the tax collector does and can’t make them return the 2 million,” DeLeo pointed out to the News Leader in his email.
“It’s vitally important to get the $2 million back and to vindicate the rights of the school district and taxpayers,” he continued. “When we voted on the referendum we were all told verbally and in writing that every penny of that tax would go to the schools. The tax collector without any valid legal basis chose to somehow reinterpret the [governing state] statute without any valid legal basis and take the money. That is a clear violation of Florida law which treats such monies as tax trust funds for a specific purpose. The tax collector broke the law and is gaslighting the public about it,” DeLeo wrote.
During a special meeting on May 5, the School Board voted 5-0 “to authorize the initiation and/or continuation of its litigation” against Moran “and to direct the Superintendent and legal counsel to take all actions necessary to implement [that] decision,” Kelsey Whaley, media relations and communications manager for the School District, told the News Leader in a May 7 email.
The Circuit Court case was discussed during a litigation strategy session before the School Board conducted its vote during open session, Whaley added.
A formal response from Moran to the schools superintendent and county administrator
On May 6, the day after the County Commission vote, Tax Collector Moran sent a letter to Sarasota County Schools Superintendent Terry Connor and County Administrator Lewis, telling them that he had reviewed the May 5 County Commission action, the News Leader has learned.
“If the Sarasota County Commission is going to pay the School Board’s portion of the commission,” Moran wrote in the letter, “we respectfully request written clarity on how exactly this is to be executed.”
He added, “Specifically, we need details regarding:
- “Return of collected funds. For example, THIS YEAR, this can be accomplished by simply sending a check from the County Commission to the Sarasota County School District. We can provide a payoff amount as of your selected date. If this is to be done by our office NEXT YEAR, we will need the arrangement in writing. [The emphases are Moran’s throughout the letter.]
- “Important … Please give our office clear direction on how you both agree for us to return ‘Excess’ funds when the time comes for THIS YEAR. This amount will likely exceed well over a million dollars. As directed by Florida statute, this year’s excess will go to the School Board unless your two bodies agree otherwise.
- “How interest will be handled between your two organizations.
- “The duration for which the County Commission will be paying the School Board’s portion of the commission going forward.”
Then Moran explained, “We do not have a preference whether this written clarity is provided in the form of motions from your respective Boards, Resolutions, or an Interlocal Agreement (ILA) between your two bodies. However, it must be exacting in the math, agreed upon by both parties, and compliant with Florida law.”
Further, Moran wrote, “Please note that we will continue to collect commissions, calculate interest, and return excess funds according to state statute until we receive a formal agreement and clear direction from both parties.”
Regret over a vote in August 2025
During his report to his colleagues, as part of their meeting this week in Venice, Knight referenced the School Board’s recent filing of a lawsuit against Sarasota County Tax Collector Moran over the commissions issue.
Knight explained that he wanted to acknowledge what he realizes was a mistake when the commissioners voted unanimously on Aug. 19, 2025 to stop handling that commission.
As the News Leader reported in its Aug. 22, 2025 issue, the county commissioners addressed that payment as they were engaged in their final budget workshop prior to approval of the county’s budget for this fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1, 2025.
In a July 2025 letter that Moran had sent to both Superintendent Connor and County Administrator Lewis, Moran explained that the Florida Statutes provide for the Tax Collector’s Office “to retain a commission for the collection of ad valorem taxes,” with those commissions to help fund the operating expenses of his office.
The News Leader included a portion of Moran’s letter to Connor and Lewis with its August 2025 article.
The amount that the county would have paid for this fiscal year was $589,556.
During that August 2025 discussion, the commissioners were focused on holding down county expenses for the 2026 and future fiscal years, given their concerns about the potential that a state referendum could be placed on the November 2026 General Election ballot that would give voters an opportunity to reduce or eliminate the amount of property taxes homeowners pay. The property tax revenue is the county government’s primary source of funds to cover the expenses of the services it provides.
Then-Chair Neunder indicated on Aug. 19, 2025 that he had attended a meeting earlier that summer of local government leaders in Orlando, which featured a caucus with the members of the committee that legislative leaders created in 2024 to address the property tax issue.
“I think it would be prudent … to keep that [referendum] top of mind as we move forward,” Neunder told his colleagues and county staff during the August 2025 budget workshop.
County Administrator Lewis proposed that the shift of the payment to the School Board begin in the 2027 fiscal year, but Commissioner Mast told her colleagues that she had talked with Moran about the situation. As a result of that conversation, she said, she believed the county should halt its payment with the 2026 fiscal year.
“I’m not interested in continuing to pick up the tab,” Mast said, adding that the School Board could find the money to do so. “We are digging deep,” she stressed, in trying to trim the county’s spending.
On May 5, acknowledging that, in the past, as a public servant, he made decisions that he regretted — he served three terms as the Sarasota County sheriff — Knight explained that after seeing news media reports regarding the School Board’s 12th Judicial Circuit Court complaint against Tax Collector Moran, “I began scrutinizing my decision … the vote in August — to allow the tax collector to charge a commission on the voter-approved, extra millage rate for [the Sarasota County Schools].”
“Looking back,” he continued, “I took everything at face value.” It appeared to him at the time, Knight said, that the School Board should be paying the cost of collecting the tax revenue, instead of the county.
“Doing some more research [and] talking to people in the community,” he continued on May 5, he believed the situation might be different from what he perceived it to be in August 2025.
“No matter how you feel about our governments, our School Board, our tax collector, fair is fair, and we have a responsibility … I believe, to make it right,” Knight said of the situation — not just for the governmental bodies, he noted, but for the citizens who have supported the special tax for the schools.
During his remarks to his colleagues, Knight also said, “This appears to me to be a discretionary action that is not required by law,” referring to the Tax Collector’s Office commission for collecting the revenue. “The tax collector may believe he is entitled to the commission,” Knight said, “but it is not illegal to not charge the commission [for the work].”
“We just believed the [$589,556] were operational costs,” he pointed out. “We never saw an accounting of the actual costs or the collection of the money.”
“None of us asked for that [documentation],” he conceded, “and I believe that was a mistake. That’s on us.”
“In the meantime, the School Board can’t use that money, which was voted on by the voters of this county. Even if the excess money is refunded to the School Board,” Knight said, “the tax collector holds it in his budget until he decides how to refund it, [and] he decides how much to refund.”
Knight then reiterated his point that it appeared to him that “there was no oversight” of the amount that Moran charged as a commission for collecting the School Board revenue, or how the $589,556 “may have been spent.”
“Also,” he noted, “this board could become involved in the litigation …”
Further, Knight pointed out that it is his understanding that former long-time Tax Collector Barbara Ford-Coates, whom Moran defeated in the November 2024 General Election, never charged a commission for collection of the School Board revenue.
“I wish I would have asked more questions last August,” Knight added.
Then, Commissioner Neunder, addressing County Attorney Joshua Moye and County Administrator Lewis, noted, “I really can’t recall how granular we got into the weeds on this particular topic [during the Aug. 19, 2025 budget workshop].”
‘A deeper and broader discussion’ warranted
Following Knight’s May 5 remarks, Neunder said, “I think we have some comments from Commissioner Knight that warrant a deeper and broader discussion about legalities, culpability, exposure, etc. … I’m not in any way, shape or form in favor of removing taxpayer dollars [authorized by voters in a referendum] from the Sarasota County School District,” Neunder added.
Lewis explained that whenever a special millage rate is dedicated to fund a specific purpose — such as the one the county has imposed to pay for the extension of The Legacy Trail to downtown Sarasota and North Port — a commission related to the collection of that revenue is paid to both the Property Appraiser’s Office and the Tax Collector’s Office.
(In 2018, the voters approved that special tax for The Legacy Trail.)
Neunder emphasized that the voters’ intent was that all of the revenue generated by the special tax for the School District would be used to improve educational opportunities for the students.
County Attorney Moye told the commissioners that it was his understanding that the Tax Collector’s Office always had taken a commission for its collection of the School District revenue. However, he added, the county had paid the commission, not the district. Given the lack of documentation that day, he told the commissioners he wanted to research the facts.
Then Moye proposed that the board members ask staff to schedule a discussion of the issues during a future meeting, indicating that that would ensure that everyone had notice of the topic, and his staff would have time to undertake the necessary research on the history of the issue.
Yet, Chair Cutsinger said that it is his understanding that the County Commission never took formal action to declare that the county would pay the commission.
“That’s my understanding,” Karen Rushing, the county clerk of the Circuit Court and county comptroller, responded, adding that she did not know whether previous Tax Collector Ford-Coates ever had a conversation about the commission with a previous County Commission chair or county administrator. “It didn’t rise to my level,” she said. “And I don’t recall it being brought up at a board meeting.”
Then, mirroring Moye’s earlier remark, Cutsinger told his colleagues, “I’m super hesitant to move forward” without an in-depth discussion at a future meeting. “Does [Moran] have the discretion not to even collect a fee? I don’t know,” Cutsinger added.
If someone has to pay the commission, Cutsinger continued, and the county took on that responsibility, that essentially would be a county contribution of several hundred thousand dollars to the School Board.
Commissioner Mast also reported that she had found no documentation regarding how the county had ended up paying the commission. Nonetheless, she said, “It costs money to collect money; someone’s got to pay it.”
Commissioner Mark Smith said he was “inclined to agree with [Knight’s] motion .. and make sure we’re not burdening the School Board.”
Smith added, “Like everyone else, I guess I didn’t fully understand the ramifications of that [Aug. 19, 2025] vote.”
Moye told the board members that if they want the county to cover the fee, they should do so through a formal agreement.
If the commissioners wanted to pay the $589,556, County Administrator Lewis told them, he likely would have to include a budget amendment on a future agenda that would call for the funds to be taken out of reserves.
In response to a question from Knight, Lewis explained that the county generally receives funds each year from the Tax Collector’s Office, representing what would be considered “profit” in the business world. Thus, if the money the county receives back from the Tax Collector’s Office this fiscal year exceeds the $589,556, then that commission to the Tax Collector’s Office would be ‘netted out.”
Thus, Lewis conceded, a budget amendment may not be necessary.
“A mature way to do it,” Knight said, “would be to have three governmental bodies working together on it.”
Refuting ‘much misinformation’
Late in the afternoon of May 5, the News Leader learned from the Lou Hammond Group, the Charleston, S.C., public relations firm that assists the Sarasota County Tax Collector’s Office, that an informational video had been posted on the office’s website in regard to the “ ‘School Board Commission’ topic,” as a statement on the website explains.
That header adds, “If you have additional questions, email our office at Info@SarasotaTaxCollector.gov and our team will get back to you as quickly as possible.”
The video begins, “There has been much misinformation in the press related to the School Board and how fees are paid to the Tax Collector’s Office.”
It explains, “Every year, the tax collector in Sarasota County collects billions of dollars of taxes on behalf of hundreds of taxing authorities.” It adds that examples of those taxing authorities are “Sarasota County Government, fire districts, stormwater assessments and the Sarasota County School District.”
Then it points out, “All these taxing authorities are mandated by Florida Statute to pay a fee to the tax collector to cover the expenses of running the Tax Collector’s Office. The State of Florida calls these fees ‘commissions,’ ” the video says.
The video next reiterates that state law mandates those fees.
However, it notes, “The School Board’s commissions are a little different” than those of most taxing authorities. “The majority of the School Board’s commissions are mandated by Florida Law to be paid by the Sarasota County Commission, but a portion of the School Board’s commissions are mandated to be paid by the School Board. The new tax collector for Sarasota County uncovered that the portion of the commission that was to be paid by the School Board was actually being paid by the Sarasota County Commission. It appears that the Sarasota County Government was paying this commission for almost 24 years.”
Then the video stresses, “Important: It has also been reported in the press that this is a new commission to the Tax Collector’s Office. This is not a new commission. The Tax Collector’s Office has simply insured that the existing commission is applied to the correct entity as required by Florida law.”
The video also says, “The new tax collector notified the School Board and the Sarasota County Commission, asking for clarification if the Sarasota County Government wanted to continue paying the commission that is legally the responsibility of the School Board. The Sarasota County Commission voted unanimously to stop paying the School Board’s portion of the commission. As a result, the Sarasota County tax collector is now collecting the School Board commission as required by Florida law.”