Title: Alachua County v. Watson
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: SC19-2016
State: Florida
Issuer: Florida Supreme Court
Date: January 27, 2022

Supreme Court of Florida 
 
____________ 
 
No. SC19-2016 
____________ 
 
ALACHUA COUNTY, FLORIDA, etc., 
Petitioner, 
 
vs. 
 
CLOVIS WATSON, JR., etc.,1 
Respondent. 
 
January 27, 2022 
 
COURIEL, J. 
 
In this case, we decide how two statutes divide between a 
county and its sheriff the power to make changes to the sheriff’s 
budget.  Specifically, the parties ask us to determine a sheriff’s 
authority to transfer money within the sheriff’s budget at a certain 
level of detail—what is called the “object” level—under chapters 30 
and 129, Florida Statutes (2020).  After the Sheriff of Alachua 
County (Sheriff) moved approximately $840,000 between two 
 
1.  While this matter was pending, Sadie Darnell was replaced 
as Sheriff of Alachua County by Clovis Watson, Jr., who is 
substituted for her as Respondent. 
 
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objects in the budget without approval from Alachua County’s 
Board of Commissioners (County) in 2016, the County sought 
declaratory judgment that the Sheriff had no authority to do so. 
We have jurisdiction because the decision of the First District 
Court of Appeal expressly affects a class of constitutional or state 
officers (really two classes, sheriffs and county commissioners).  Art. 
V, § 3(b)(3), Fla. Const.  We conclude that when seeking to transfer 
money between objects, the Sheriff must follow the budgetary 
amendment process established by the Legislature in chapter 129, 
and that the Sheriff failed to do so here.  The existence of a detailed 
process for the review and approval of funding decisions at the 
object level, reflected in the plain, whole text of the statute, means 
that the Legislature decided the Sheriff must obtain the County’s 
approval before amending those appropriations that the County had 
previously fixed and approved from the funds it had collected. 
I 
Chapter 30, Florida Statutes (2020), specifically addresses the 
sheriffs’ offices, and chapter 129 concerns the counties’ annual 
 
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budgets.  The budgeting sections of chapter 30 explicitly refer to 
and incorporate portions of chapter 129.2  We start there. 
A 
In Florida, we have long had a “budget system for the control 
of the finances of the boards of county commissioners of the several 
counties of the state.”  § 129.01, Fla. Stat. (2020); see also Consol. 
Naval Stores Co. v. Hendry, 30 So. 2d 617, 619 (Fla. 1947) (“The 
purpose and policy of budgeting is to inoculate the administration 
of national, state and local government with some degree of system 
and business order; to put an end to blind spending; to get away 
from anything that savors of a spendthrift policy, and reduce 
income and outgo to a common level.”).  That means, each year, a 
budget “must be prepared, summarized, and approved by the board 
of county commissioners of each county.”  § 129.01(2)(a), Fla. Stat. 
(2020).  Each county’s budget “must be balanced, so that the total 
 
2.  See, e.g., § 30.49(1), Fla Stat. (2020) (“Pursuant to s. 
129.03(2), each sheriff shall annually prepare and submit to the 
board of county commissioners a proposed budget . . . .”); § 30.50(4) 
(“ [T]he budget may be amended as provided for county budgets in 
s. 129.06(2).”); § 30.49(8) (“[Budget items] shall be subject to the 
same provisions of law as the county annual budget . . . .”).  
(Chapter 129 is entitled “County Annual Budget.”) 
 
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of the estimated receipts available from taxation and other sources, 
including balances brought forward from prior fiscal years, equals 
the total of appropriations for expenditures and reserves.”  § 
129.01(2)(b).  Chapter 129 defines and limits the kinds of reserves 
each county can set aside for projected expenses.  § 129.01(2)(c).  It 
allows the county to make an appropriation for the payment of its 
outstanding debts.  § 129.01(2)(d).  And it sets out how and under 
what circumstances budget surpluses can be carried over at the 
end of each fiscal year.  § 129.01(2)(e). 
The statute provides “specific directions and requirements” 
about what each county’s budget must include.  § 129.02.  The 
county must provide “an estimate of receipts by source and 
balances” for its general fund budget, the County Transportation 
Trust Fund budget, the budget for the county’s fine and forfeiture 
fund, and its capital outlay reserve fund budget.  § 129.02(1)-(4).  
The budget for the county’s fine and forfeiture fund in particular 
must contain “an itemized estimate of expenditures that need to be 
incurred to carry on all criminal prosecution, and all other law 
enforcement functions and activities of the county.”  § 129.02(3).  
 
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“For each special district[3] included within the county budget, the 
budget must show budgeted revenues and expenditures by 
organizational unit which are at least at the level of detail required 
for the annual financial report” that Florida law requires of local 
government entities.  § 129.02(6) (citing § 218.32(1), Fla. Sta. 
(2020)). 
Having set what must be included in a budget, chapter 129 
then requires that “the budgets of all county officers, as submitted 
to the board of county commissioners, must be in sufficient detail 
and contain such information as the board of county 
commissioners may require in furtherance of their powers and 
responsibilities provided in ss. 125.01(1)(q), (r), and (v), and (6) and 
129.01(2)(b).”  § 129.021.  Those provisions, in summary, refer to a 
county’s taxing power, its power to require every county official to 
submit an annual operating budget, and the county’s responsibility 
to balance its budget. 
 
3.  A special district is “a unit of local government created for a 
special purpose, as opposed to a general purpose, which has 
jurisdiction to operate within a limited geographic boundary and is 
created by general law, special act, local ordinance, or by rule of the 
Governor and Cabinet.”  § 189.012(6), Fla. Stat. (2020). 
 
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Using all this information, each county prepares and formally 
adopts a budget every year.  Relevant to our case, a sheriff, like the 
clerk of the circuit court, county comptroller, certain tax collectors, 
and the county supervisor of elections, “shall,” on or before June 1 
of each year (or a month earlier, if the county says so), “submit to 
the board of county commissioners a tentative budget for [the 
sheriff’s] office[] for the ensuing fiscal year.”  § 129.03(2).  Then, the 
board of county commissioners “shall receive and examine the 
tentative budget for each fund”4 and, subject to the notice and 
hearing requirements of the law governing how counties set millage5 
rates, “shall require such changes to be made as it deems 
 
4.  In this context, a “fund” is “an independent fiscal and 
accounting entity consisting of a self-balancing set of accounts for 
recording cash and/or other assets together with related liabilities, 
reserves and equities segregated for the purpose of carrying on 
specific activities or attaining certain objectives in accordance with 
certain defined regulations, restrictions and limitations.”  Fla. Dept. 
of Fin. Servs. Bureau of Fin. Reporting, Uniform Accounting System 
Manual for Florida Local Governments (2014) (UASM) at 6.  The 
UASM gives examples of fund categories, including “General Fund,” 
“Capital Projects Funds,” and “Special Revenue Funds.”  Id. 
 
5.  A “mill” is one one-thousandth of a dollar, or one tenth of 
one cent.  In the context of taxes on real estate, the “millage rate” 
refers to the tax assessed for each $1,000 of property value.  See 
Black’s Law Dictionary 1190 (11th ed. 2019).  
 
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necessary, provided the budget remains in balance.”  § 129.03(3)(a).  
The county next “prepare[s] a statement summarizing all of the 
adopted tentative budgets” showing, for each and for the total of all 
the budgets so submitted, “the proposed tax millages, balances, 
reserves, and the total for each major classification of receipts and 
expenditures.”  § 129.03(3)(b).  It holds public hearings to adopt 
tentative and final budgets, “primarily for the purpose of hearing 
requests and complaints from the public regarding the budgets and 
the proposed tax levies and for explaining the budget and any 
proposed or adopted amendments.”  § 129.03(3)(c).  And, by 
October 15 of each year, the county submits a final budget, along 
with other economic data, to the Office of Economic and 
Demographic Research.  § 129.03(3)(d). 
It is unlawful for a county to exceed a budget that has been 
finalized this way, unless the budget is modified as provided in 
section 129.06, to which we will turn soon.  § 129.07.  But first, we 
catch a glimpse of some teeth in the statute and see where they are 
meant to bite:  it is the members of the board of county 
commissioners who are liable for debts taken in excess of the duly 
approved budget.  See id.  And any member of the board who 
 
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knowingly and willfully votes to take on debt in excess of the budget 
“shall be guilty of malfeasance in office and subject to suspension 
and removal from office as now provided by law, and shall be guilty 
of a misdemeanor” punishable by a fine and up to six months in 
county jail.  § 129.08.  In this way, the statute gives each county, 
and the individual members of the board of county commissioners, 
an incentive to ensure that any adjustments to the budget are made 
a certain way—the way, that is, set out in section 129.06, the 
provision at the center of this case. 
Section 129.06 starts from the premise that, “[u]pon the final 
adoption of the budgets as provided in this chapter, the budgets so 
adopted must regulate expenditures of the county and each special 
district included within the county budget, and the itemized 
estimates of expenditures must have the effect of fixed 
appropriations and may not be amended, altered, or exceeded 
except as provided in this chapter.”  § 129.06(1). 
The statute lays out five ways a county may change the fixed 
appropriations reflected in the budget without holding a public 
hearing and, after such a hearing, adopting a resolution.  § 
129.06(2).  None of those ways describes the transfer at issue here 
 
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but, in expressly delineating the circumstances to which these 
exceptions apply, we see in the structure of chapter 129 a bulwark 
against cavalier adjustments to duly enacted appropriations.  No 
amendment happens without a public hearing and formal 
resolution in its favor, unless: (1) the total appropriations for the 
relevant fund do not change as a result of the appropriation; (2) the 
amendment draws from the reserve for contingencies to increase 
the appropriation for any particular expense in the same fund, or to 
create a new appropriation in the fund; (3) the amendment draws 
from the reserve for future construction and improvements, if for 
the purpose for which the reserve was made; (4) the amendment 
draws from a source not anticipated in the budget and received for 
a particular purpose (like a grant or gift);6 or (5) the amendment 
 
6.  Even with found money, the county must adhere to 
budgeting protocol.  A receipt “received for a particular purpose . . . 
[may] be appropriated and expended for that purpose,” but “[s]uch 
receipts and appropriations must be added to the budget of the 
proper fund.”  § 129.06(2)(d).  And, significantly for the transfer of 
funds we consider today—which involved not found money, but 
money that had previously been budgeted for another purpose—the 
resolution authorizing the expenditure of receipts from unexpected 
sources “may amend the budget to transfer revenue between funds 
to properly account for unanticipated revenue.”  Id. 
 
 
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draws from increased receipts for enterprise or proprietary funds.7  
Unless it is provided for in the budget, including by amendment in 
any of the ways explained above, a transfer between funds may be 
made only if it is to correct an error in handling receipts and 
disbursements, or to properly account for unanticipated revenue or 
increased receipts.  § 129.06(3). 
The last piece of section 129.06 relevant to this case is the so-
called “lame duck” provision.  It states: 
Any county constitutional officer whose budget is 
approved by the board of county commissioners, who has 
not been reelected to office or is not seeking reelection, 
shall be prohibited from making any budget 
amendments, transferring funds between itemized 
appropriations, or expending in a single month more 
than one-twelfth of any itemized approved appropriation, 
following the date he or she is eliminated as a candidate 
or October 1, whichever comes later, without approval of 
the board of county commissioners. 
 
7.  Enterprise and proprietary funds are related to things the 
county provides to the public for a fee, like water and sewer utility 
funds.  See UASM at 7 (“Enterprise Funds” are created “[t]o account 
for operations (a) that are financed and operated in a manner 
similar to private business enterprises--where the intent of the 
governing body is that the costs (expenses, including depreciation) 
of providing goods or services to the general public on a continuing 
basis be financed or recovered primarily through user charges; or 
(b) where the governing body has decided that periodic 
determination of revenues earned, expenses incurred and/or net 
income is appropriate for capital maintenance, public policy, 
management control, accountability or other purposes.”). 
 
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§ 129.06(5).  Of note, this law prohibits the constitutional officers to 
whom it is addressed “from making any budget amendments” along 
the lines outlined elsewhere in section 129.06, not just from 
“transferring funds between itemized appropriations.”  Id. 
B 
Sheriffs are, in sixty-six of Florida’s sixty-seven counties, duly 
elected constitutional officers.8  Chapter 30 of our statutes 
addresses them specifically, laying out significant powers and 
responsibilities, several of which are exclusive to them.  For 
example, each sheriff has the exclusive power to appoint deputies, 
so long as those candidates meet all statutory qualifications.  § 
30.073(1).  Sheriffs “shall . . . [s]uppress tumults, riots, and 
unlawful assemblies in their counties with force and strong hand 
when necessary” and “[a]pprehend, without warrant, any person 
 
8.  The temporary exception is Miami-Dade County.  In 1966, 
the office of sheriff was abolished in Miami-Dade County and the 
powers and functions of the sheriff were transferred to the mayor, 
who “may delegate to a suitable person or person the powers and 
functions” of the sheriff.  Mia.-Dade Cnty., Fla., Charter art. 9, § 
9.01(C) (2021).  In 2018, voters passed Amendment 10 to the 
Florida Constitution which, in part, requires Miami-Dade County to 
hold elections for its sheriff starting in 2024.  Art. VIII, § 6(g)(2), Fla. 
Const. 
 
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disturbing the peace, and carry that person before the proper 
judicial officer, that further proceedings may be had against him or 
her according to law.”  § 30.15(f)-(g).  A sheriff has “full, complete 
and plenary” discretion “to temporarily close any public beach, 
park, or other public recreation facility within the sheriff’s 
jurisdiction when in his or her discretion conditions exist which 
present a clear and present or probable threat of violence, danger, 
or disorder, or at any time a disorderly situation exists which in the 
sheriff’s opinion warrants such action.”  § 30.291. 
More to the point at issue here, section 30.53, entitled 
“Independence of constitutional officials,” addresses sheriffs’ 
spending power: 
The independence of the sheriffs shall be preserved 
concerning the purchase of supplies and equipment, 
selection of personnel, and the hiring, firing, and setting 
of salaries of such personnel; provided that nothing 
herein contained shall restrict the establishment or 
operation of any civil service system or civil service board 
created pursuant to s. 14, Art. III, of the Constitution of 
Florida, provided, further that nothing contained in ss. 
30.48-30.53 shall be construed to alter, modify or change 
in any manner any civil service system or board, state or 
local, now in existence or hereafter established. 
 
§ 30.53. 
 
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And yet, chapter 30 does not give the sheriffs exclusive 
authority over budgetary matters, for sheriffs are subject to the 
provisions of chapter 129.  The statute provides that “items placed 
in the budget of the board of county commissioners pursuant to 
this law” are subject to “the same provisions of law as the county 
annual budget.”  § 30.49(8).  In providing a proposed annual budget 
to the county commission, the sheriff must categorize proposed 
expenditures at several levels of specificity.  § 30.49(2)(a).  The 
broadest category within the sheriff’s budget is the “function” level, 
which includes “general law enforcement,” “corrections and 
detention alternative facilities,” and “court services, excluding 
service of process.”  § 30.49(2)(a)(1)-(3).  Within each function are 
six “objects,” which include “personnel services,” “operating 
expenses,” “capital outlay,” “debt service,” “grants and aids,” and 
“other uses.” § 30.49(2)(c)(1)-(6).  At the request of the county, the 
sheriff must also break down expenses at the more granular 
“subobject” level.  § 30.49(3).  The subobject level includes items 
such as executive salaries, court reporter services, utility services, 
office supplies, and interest on debt.  Fla. Dept. of Fin. Servs. 
 
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Bureau of Fin. Reporting, Uniform Accounting System Manual for 
Florida Local Governments 132-141 (2014) (UASM).9 
The county “may not amend, modify, increase, or reduce any 
expenditure at the subobject code level” or “require confidential 
information concerning details of investigations” as part of its 
budgetary oversight of the sheriff’s operations.  § 30.49(3).  It may, 
however, “require the sheriff to correct mathematical, mechanical, 
factual, and clerical errors and errors as to form in the proposed 
budget” (without regard to the level of specificity) and, after a 
hearing, “amend, modify, increase, or reduce any or all items of 
expenditure in the proposed budget . . . and shall approve such 
budget, as amended, modified, increased, or reduced.”  § 30.49(4).  
After approving the budget, the county must notify the sheriff in 
writing of the approved budget and include “the specific items 
amended, modified, increased, or reduced.”  § 30.49(4), Fla. Stat. 
(2020). 
 
9.  The statute uses terms defined by the UASM.  § 30.49(2)(c) 
(“[E]xpenditures must be itemized in accordance with the uniform 
accounting system prescribed by the Department of Financial 
Services.”).  This includes functions, objects, and subobjects.   
As the parties did in their briefs, we refer to the version of the 
UASM that was in effect when this dispute arose. 
 
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In our case, the parties do not dispute that the Sheriff must 
follow the steps set out at section 30.49.  They agree the Sheriff’s 
proposed budget must include estimated amounts for “all proposed 
expenditures for operating and equipping the sheriff’s office and jail, 
excluding the cost of construction, repair, or capital improvement of 
county buildings during the fiscal year.”  § 30.49(2)(a).  Nor do the 
parties dispute certain limits to the County’s budgeting authority.  
For example, while the County may reduce the amount of money 
allocated to personnel services (an object), it may not shift money 
from the Sheriff’s salary to the salaries of deputies (subobjects).10  
One last element of chapter 30 is relevant to this case:  it lays 
out a process for appealing budgetary disagreements.  If a sheriff 
wants to appeal the county’s decision on a budgetary matter, he or 
she must file an appeal to the Administration Commission 
 
10.  The Sheriff has not argued that the transfer of funds at 
issue was required by an emergency.  Chapter 30 speaks to those, 
too.  “If in the judgment of the sheriff an emergency should arise by 
reason of which the sheriff would be unable to perform his or her 
duties without the expenditure of larger amounts than those 
provided in the budget, he or she may apply to the board of county 
commissioners for the appropriation of additional amounts.”  § 
30.49(10).  The sheriff gets to appeal the county’s decision if it is 
unsatisfactory.  
 
 
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(Commission) within 30 days of the board’s approval.  § 30.49(4)(a), 
Fla. Stat. (2020).  The Executive Office of the Governor (Executive 
Office) must hold a hearing for each party to make its case.  § 
30.49(5), Fla. Stat. (2020).  The Executive Office must submit a 
report of the hearing to the Commission, which then approves, 
amends, or modifies the sheriff’s budget “as to each separate item.”  
Id.  The Commission’s decision is final.  Id. 
C 
The parties do not dispute the facts that brought them here.  
In 2016, the Sheriff moved about $840,000 between objects without 
the County’s approval.  Some $700,000 of that money was 
transferred from jail personnel expenditures to the Sheriff’s 
operating expenses and capital outlay.  The County sued for a 
declaratory judgment that the Sheriff lacked authority to transfer 
appropriated funds within the Sheriff’s budget at the object level—
that is, between “personnel services,” “operating expenses,” “capital 
outlay,” “debt service,” “grants and aids,” and “other uses”—or at 
the function level—that is, between “general law enforcement,” 
“corrections and detention alternative facilities,” and “court 
services, excluding service of process”—without County approval.  
 
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The trial court found that it lacked jurisdiction on the issue of 
function transfers, the Sheriff having made none of those.  But after 
a bench trial, the court concluded that the Sheriff had the authority 
to make transfers at the object level without County approval.  
Alachua Cnty., Fla. v. Darnell, No. 01-2017-CA-521, 2018 WL 
11189988, at *1 (Fla. 8th Cir. Ct. Jan. 5, 2018). 
The First District agreed.  Its decision rested on three points: 
section 30.53 preserves sheriffs’ independence; the “lame duck” 
provision of section 129.06(5) specifies the only situation where the 
sheriff needs board approval for a transfer; and Weitzenfeld v. 
Dierks, 312 So. 2d 194 (Fla. 1975), is controlling and affirms the 
Sheriff’s budgetary independence. 
II 
Since the merits of this case only concern statutory 
interpretation, our review is de novo.  GTC, Inc. v. Edgar, 967 So. 2d 
781, 785 (Fla. 2007).  The “plain meaning of the statute is always 
the starting point in statutory interpretation.”  Id.  As the Supreme 
Court of the United States recently explained, 
[w]hen called on to resolve a dispute over a statute’s 
meaning, [we] normally seek[] to afford the law’s terms 
their ordinary meaning at the time [the legislature] 
 
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adopted them.  The people who come before us are 
entitled, as well, to have independent judges exhaust “all 
the textual and structural clues” bearing on that 
meaning.  When exhausting those clues enables us to 
resolve the interpretive question put to us, our “sole 
function” is to apply the law as we find it. 
   
Niz-Chavez v. Garland, 141 S. Ct. 1474, 1480 (2021) (internal 
citations omitted) (quoting Wisconsin Central Ltd. v. United States, 
138 S. Ct. 2067, 2074 (2018), and Lamie v. U.S. Trustee, 540 U.S. 
526, 534 (2004)).  Here, on balance, the textual and structural 
clues tell us that the County has the correct reading of the statutes 
at issue. 
A 
As is often the case, each party before us can marshal a piece 
of the statutory text at issue to support its position.  But we 
consider chapters 129 and 30 in concert to ascertain the plain 
meaning of the specific provisions on which this dispute turns.  See 
K Mart Corp. v. Cartier, Inc., 486 U.S. 281, 291 (1988) (“In 
ascertaining the plain meaning of the statute, the court must look 
to the particular statutory language at issue, as well as the 
language and design of the statute as a whole.”).  It is the statutes 
we have set forth in our discussion above, and how as integrated 
 
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bodies of law they fit together, that resolve this case.  See Antonin 
Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal 
Texts 167 (2012) (“Perhaps no interpretive fault is more common 
than the failure to follow the whole-text canon, which calls on the 
judicial interpreter to consider the entire text, in view of its 
structure and of the physical and logical relation of its many 
parts.”). 
Structurally, chapters 30 and 129 are built around the fact 
that, as to the money relevant to this dispute, the County is the 
relevant taxing authority.  See generally art. VII, § 9, Fla. Const.  
That is, the Sheriff’s operations are funded in substantial part by 
taxes collected by the County, and the legislatively crafted 
interaction between chapters 129 and 30 makes sense when we 
start from the proposition that it is the taxpayers’ money, as 
collected by the County, that the Sheriff is spending each year.  It is 
for this reason that “[a]ll fees, commissions, or other funds collected 
by the sheriff for services rendered or performed by his or her office 
shall be remitted monthly to the county.”  § 30.51(5).  It is also why 
“the budgets of all county officers, as submitted to the board of 
county commissioners, must be in sufficient detail and contain 
 
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such information as the board of county commissioners may 
require.”  § 129.021.  The County must balance its budget, and it 
must include submissions from the Sheriff on a statutorily 
prescribed schedule.  See § 120.03(3)(a).  It is the County’s 
responsibility to hold public hearings to review and adopt the 
budget, § 129.03(3)(c), and it is the county commissioners who are 
statutorily liable for debts incurred in excess of the duly approved 
budget.  § 120.07. 
This financial relationship, carefully laid out in the statutes, is 
not in derogation of the Sheriff’s constitutional independence, 
which the plain words selected by the Legislature also preserve.  
See § 30.53.  Yet the Sheriff’s independence as a constitutional 
officer does not answer the question before us, for county 
commissioners, too, are duly elected constitutional officers, and 
neither party’s status as such tells us at what level of budgetary 
detail one is free to act without the consent of the other.  See 
Pinellas Cnty. v. Nelson, 362 So. 2d 279, 281 (Fla. 1978) (Hatchett, 
J.) (“Chapter 129 expressly imposes upon the Board of County 
Commissioners the duty and responsibility to oversee the budgets 
of all departments, agencies, and offices coming under its control 
 
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for budget purposes.”).  The Sheriff’s spending authority, as given 
specific force in section 30.53, is authority to make funding 
decisions about matters that, in budgetary parlance, are 
subobjects:  “the purchase of supplies and equipment, selection of 
personnel, and the hiring, firing, and setting of salaries of such 
personnel.”  § 30.53; see also UASM at 131-141.11 
Another structural clue appears in section 30.49.  That 
provision requires the sheriff to itemize proposed budget 
expenditures into categories that correspond to the fund and object 
level: general law enforcement, corrections and detention alternative 
facilities, and court services, excluding service of process.  See § 
30.49(2)(a); UASM at 103 (521.00 Law Enforcement; 523.00 
Detention and Correction).  In its very next subsection, the statute 
requires the sheriff to provide historical budget expenditures for 
 
 
11.  UASM at 132 (indicating which codes are object codes and 
subobject codes); id. at 133 (subobject codes 11-15 correspond to 
salaries); id. at 135 (subobject codes 31-34 correspond to other 
types of personnel, e.g., accountants or janitorial); id. at 136-37 
(subobject codes 42, 47, 51, 52, 53, and 54 correspond to various 
supplies, e.g., office supplies or food); id. at 137 (subobject code 55 
corresponds to training); id. at 138 (subobject code 64 corresponds 
to “machinery and equipment”). 
 
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previous fiscal years down to the subobject level.  It then provides 
that the board “may not amend, modify, increase, or reduce any 
expenditure at the subobject code level.”  § 30.49(3).  A natural 
reading of these two immediately adjacent provisions, in a section of 
the code entitled “Budgets,” suggests a break between objects and 
subobjects for budgetary purposes.  The meaning of that break is 
spelled out in the plain language of the statute, which reflects a 
legislative choice to restrict the board’s action at the subobject level, 
while requiring the sheriff to provide prospective information about 
projected object-level—but not subobject-level—expenditures. 
It is, in other words, a specific degree of budgetary 
independence that the Legislature has afforded the Sheriff.  While 
section 30.53 states that “[t]he independence of the sheriffs shall be 
preserved concerning the purchase of supplies and equipment, 
selection of personnel, and the hiring, firing, and setting of salaries 
of such personnel,” it does not exempt sheriffs from the provisions 
of section 129 altogether, although it of course might have.  We 
therefore read section 30.53 in harmony with its neighboring 
provisions, and with chapter 129, the purposeful and precise 
choices of which would have little force if we understood those 
 
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provisions to give the Sheriff the budgetary authority he claims 
here.  See Busby v. State, 894 So. 2d 88, 100 (Fla. 2004) (rejecting 
an interpretation that would “directly undercut this Court’s charge 
of interpreting statutes as a harmonious whole, giving effect to each 
of their constituent parts”); Scalia & Garner, supra, at 180 (“The 
imperative of harmony among provisions is more categorical than 
most other canons of construction because it is invariably true that 
intelligent drafters do not contradict themselves (in the absence of 
duress).  Hence there can be no justification for needlessly 
rendering provisions in conflict if they can be interpreted 
harmoniously.”).  So, the Sheriff must follow the budgetary 
amendment process established by the Legislature when seeking to 
transfer money between objects in his budget. 
B 
But, says the Sheriff, what about the “lame duck” provision of 
section 129.06(5)?  In providing that “any constitutional officer . . . 
who has not been reelected to office or is not seeking reelection, 
shall be prohibited from . . . transferring funds between itemized 
appropriations,” the statute suggests that constitutional officers 
who do not fall into the “lame duck” category are not so prohibited 
 
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from transferring funds.  Citing our decision in Moonlit Waters 
Apartments, Inc. v. Cauley, 666 So. 2d 898, 900 (Fla. 1996), the 
First District agreed, finding that “[u]nder the principle of statutory 
construction, expressio unius est exclusio alterius, the prohibition 
cannot be read to also apply to sitting sheriffs . . . [because] ‘the 
mention of one thing implies the exclusion of another.’”  Alachua 
Cnty. v. Darnell, 301 So. 3d 1027, 1029 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019) 
(citation omitted) (quoting Moonlit Waters, 666 So. 2d at 900). 
The expressio unius canon, also called the “negative 
implication” canon, does support the Sheriff’s reading of section 
129.06(5) if that provision is considered by itself, but—and this is 
the matter before us—it does not supply the meaning of that 
provision in the context of the whole text at issue.  The Legislature 
did not write section 129.06(5) on a blank slate in 1988.  See ch. 
88-85, § 2, at 365, Laws of Fla.  The provisions contained in 
sections 30.49(8) and 30.50(4) were already there, contemplating 
that the sheriffs would request amendments to appropriations as 
needed, and would apply to their respective boards of county 
commissioners for the appropriation of additional funds.  We 
presume the Legislature knew about the preexisting provisions, and 
 
- 25 - 
that it would have expressly overruled them if such had been the 
legislative bargain that was to become our law.  See Palm Harbor 
Special Fire Control Dist. v. Kelly, 516 So. 2d 249, 250 (Fla. 1987) 
(“[T]he legislature is presumed to pass subsequent enactments with 
full awareness of all prior enactments and an intent that they 
remain in force.”).  But it was not. 
The lame duck provision occupies a statutory architecture that 
makes the Sheriff’s proposed reading of it untenable.  “Virtually all 
the authorities who discuss the negative-implication canon 
emphasize that it must be applied with great caution, since its 
application depends so much on context. . . . The doctrine properly 
applies only when the unius (or technically, unum, the thing 
specified) can reasonably be thought of as an expression of all that 
shares in the grant or the prohibition involved.”  Scalia & Garner, 
supra, at 107.  Here, at length and in detail, the statutes at issue 
tell us the lame duck provision is not an expression of all the 
sheriff’s authority, or all the county’s authority, that is at stake in 
the process of setting and amending budgets.  It is instead an 
expression of the authority granted to (or a prohibition imposed 
upon) a sheriff in a limited circumstance:  when he or she “has not 
 
- 26 - 
been reelected to office or is not seeking reelection . . . following the 
date he or she is eliminated as a candidate or October 1, whichever 
comes later.”  § 129.06(5). 
Reading the lame duck provision to limit specifically the 
budget-amending authority only of lame duck sheriffs spares much 
of the rest of chapter 129 from obsolescence.  For example, reading 
it the way the County does makes sense of the public hearings 
called for by section 129.03(3)(c), the work of which could otherwise 
be tossed aside by the sheriff if his or her unilateral amendment 
authority extended to object-level transfers.  Similarly, the statute’s 
procedures for modulating appropriations in emergency 
circumstances would be of no use if the Sheriff had the authority he 
purports to have under the lame duck provision.  Nor would some 
parts of chapter 30 be spared from obsolescence were the Sheriff 
correct:  there would be little need for recourse to the 
Administration Commission as contemplated in section 30.49(4) 
and (5) if the Sheriff were free to make transfers at the object level 
after they had become fixed appropriations.  It is better, and indeed 
our role, to read these provisions so that they do not undo each 
 
- 27 - 
other, as each reflects a purposeful legislative choice that makes 
sense in the context of its neighbors. 
C 
 
Our decision today does not overrule Weitzenfeld v. Dierks, 
312 So. 2d 194 (Fla. 1975).  In that case, we considered whether 
the Department of Administration’s12 ability to modify a county’s 
changes to a sheriff’s budget under a prior version13 of section 
 
12.  Established by the Legislature in 1969, the Department of 
Administration was a state agency responsible for overseeing 
planning and budgets. Ch. 69-106, § 31, at 552, Laws of Fla.  The 
Department of Administration was abolished in 1992, and most of 
its responsibilities were transferred to the newly created 
Department of Management Services.  When Weitzenfeld was 
decided, section 30.49 stated that the Department supervised 
review of county modifications to sheriffs’ budgets.  § 30.49(5), Fla. 
Stat. (1973).  Under the current statutory scheme, the review 
process is overseen by the Administration Commission and the 
Executive Office.  § 30.49(5), Fla. Stat. (2021).  This process is not 
in play here, because the County did not make any changes or 
deletions to the Sheriff’s proposed budget, and therefore the matter 
was not presented to the Administration Commission and Executive 
Office. 
 
13.  Since 1975, section 30.49 has been revised on several 
occasions, most notably in 2002 and 2011. Ch. 2002-193, § 2, 
Laws of Fla.; ch. 2011-144, § 2, Laws of Fla.  In 2002, the 
Legislature overhauled the required format of sheriffs’ budgets.  
Instead of six narrow categories of expenditure, sheriffs were 
thereafter required to organize their budgets into three broad 
functional categories, organized by object code.  Ch. 2002-193, § 2.  
 
 
- 28 - 
30.49 was “an unconstitutional attempt to vest in an appointive 
official unrestricted discretion.”  312 So. 2d at 195.  That prior 
version of the statute required the sheriffs to sort their proposed 
budgets into six categories of expenses at a single level of detail—all 
of which we would today call subobjects.  § 30.49(2), Fla. Stat. 
(1973). 
The Sheriff’s authority to make transfers at the subobject level 
is not at issue today.  But in Weitzenfeld, it was, and in that context 
we decided that the county did not have the authority to determine 
the utilization of monies once allocated by the sheriff among those 
categories.  312 So. 2d at 195.  It remains true that our statutes do 
not “authorize an intrusion into the functions which are necessarily 
within the purview of the office of sheriff.”  Id. at 196.  But the 
Legislature, in a carefully composed statutory framework that we 
will not disturb, has provided additional specificity about what 
functions are within that purview, and what to do in the event that 
amendments may be in order. 
 
In 2011, acting to further “local government accountability”, the 
Legislature required sheriffs to further break down object-level 
spending to the subobject level, putting into place the framework we 
have considered in this case. 
 
- 29 - 
III 
 
We quash the First District’s decision and hold that the Sheriff 
is not permitted under chapters 30 and 129, Florida Statutes, to 
make object-level transfers without the approval of the Alachua 
County Board of County Commissioners. 
 
It is so ordered. 
CANADY, C.J., and POLSTON, LABARGA, LAWSON, MUÑIZ, and 
GROSSHANS, JJ., concur. 
 
NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE REHEARING MOTION 
AND, IF FILED, DETERMINED. 
 
Application for Review of the Decision of the District Court of Appeal 
Class of Constitutional Officers/Direct Conflict of Decisions 
 
 
First District – Case No. 1D18-3367 
 
 
(Alachua County) 
 
Sylvia H. Walbolt of Carlton Fields, P.A., Tampa, Florida, and James 
Parker-Flynn of Carlton Fields, P.A., Tallahassee, Florida; and 
Robert C. Swain, County Attorney, Alachua County, Gainesville, 
Florida, 
 
 
for Petitioner 
 
Jacob Rush of Alachua County Sheriff’s Office, Gainesville, Florida, 
 
 
for Respondent 
 
Thomas W. Poulton of DeBevoise & Poulton, P.A, Winter Park, 
Florida, 
 
 
- 30 - 
for Amicus Curiae Florida Sheriffs Association 
 
Laura Youmans of Florida Association of Counties, Tallahassee, 
Florida; and Alicia Lobeiras and Annika E. Ashton of Broward 
County Attorney’s Office, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 
 
for Amici Curiae Florida Association of Counties, Inc., Florida 
Association of County Attorneys, Inc., and Broward County, 
Florida