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We've got one more person just pulling up, so we'll start in about five minutes. Where is my vice mayor? Ready to call a meeting to order? We're calling the Brouwer County Commission meeting. Today is October 13, 2026, and we're calling this meeting to order. Before we get to our quick agenda item, I just wanted to say a couple quick things. I want to make sure that the, pardon me, are we going to do a pledge first? Oh, I'm sorry. What do I know? You know what, why don't we have Monica, why don't you lead us in the pledge? To the Reconnation. Want to go around the desk? Nope. Okay. Welcome again. I want to just make sure, please tell me if I'm not speaking for you, but the deputies that put their life on the line, the BSO deputies who put your life on the line every day, and all the police and law enforcement that do such a great job, I want to make sure you know that you're our heroes. First responders are heroes. Fire rescue are heroes. This is not about anything but Sheriff Gregory Toney, as far as I'm concerned. It's nothing about disclosure, but Sheriff Gregory Toney. So I want to applaud you and make sure you know that we respect what you do for a living and thank you for what you do. And I just wanted to do a quick 60-second summary. From my vantage point from sitting here, and I'm just going to be factual, we have a sheriff who refuses to disclose things, fights our requests, locks his doors, hides in his office making videos, doesn't show up at our meetings, doesn't want to talk about things, and when someone doesn't want to voluntarily give information, as far as I'm concerned, my question is what is being hidden, what's there to hide. Our books are open, county books are open, anybody wants to know how we spend our money, it's wide open. And that's why we're here today, because the taxpayers of Broward County deserve to know how every dollar is being spent. What's the big deal? The sheriff continues to say that every one of you sitting here, not you, counselor, but every one of you sitting here is under criminal investigation. First of all, how would he even know that? When the state does investigations, they don't tell who's being criminally investigated, unless he initiated it. So he must have initiated it, but maybe he's under the criminal investigation, because all we were given is subpoenas to provide documents. I don't know, counsel, I asked you yesterday, I asked you today publicly, are you aware of any of us or any of the staff here under a criminal investigation? Mayor, I'm not aware of any criminal investigation that any of the commissioners or any of our staff is under. Also, we have sitting at this dais four lawyers that have over 125 years of legal experience combined, and none of us, as far as I'm concerned, ever heard of the cone of silence. I mean, it has to do with our procurement, when we send out something for procurement, but what the sheriff is saying, I think he got that from Get Smart. There was a TV show in the 60s and 70s, kind of a comical show, where they put cone heads on people. The cone of silence, he was ordered the cone. Let's see that order, Sheriff. You know, let's just see something that can verify what you're saying to be accurate. So, unfortunately, I put on the agenda today of our ability to take legal action, to give our counsel legal action, to just get information, get access to places that we own, and just to make sure our voters and our residents know how their money is being spent. That's what it comes down to. It's that simple. Everything stops if they just open their books and say, here's what we're spending our money on. It's that simple, folks. So, with that, does anybody else want to say anything before we go to our motions? Moving forward. Great. Let's go to our counselor. You want to craft our motion? Mayor, the only item before the board today is item number one, is a motion to authorize and direct the county attorney's office to take any and all appropriate legal action, as may be required, to enable Broward County to access and inspect all county-owned and county-leased facilities, including the research department and training center, development and training center, and that are utilized by the Broward County Sheriff's Office, and to authorize the county attorney's office to take any other legal action necessary against BSO to enforce the county's rights. So, county attorney, my understanding of this motion is that this is authorizing you, like we did when we voted to authorize you to sue the tax collector, but this is not the first step you'll try and negotiate with their attorney, perhaps, or the mayor may do this. We are authorizing this, but not necessarily as the first step. Is that correct? If that's the direction from the board that we continue to work with BSO and on the attorney side and with the county administrator to gain access. I agree with the mayor that we need to get this access. I'm not sure that we should not continue to try for another day or two, or you attorney to attorney, to make sure they understand that the property is owned by the, if you look at the, uh, the document the mayor showed yesterday, the property is owned by the, um, the board of county commissioners of Broward County, Florida. And I just want to make sure that the mayor is correct. We need access to this. Uh, you know, um, I want to give, you know, a day or two, um, to see if further negotiations will be successful. If not, I think we should be voting today to authorize the litigation, uh, and see what happens in the next day or two. But, uh, I would not want to give more than another day or two to try and have a last minute attempt to, uh, see if their attorney can be more reasonable than their sheriff has been. Thanks. I think it's more, it's similar to when you have a, as a landlord and you have access to, if you rent out a place, but you do have to schedule sometimes. And I, and I, you know, I'm, I'm fine with supporting this, but I do think the, you know, we should not preclude scheduling. The, the strange part about this is this, these are public buildings. So you kind of, it's, it almost, you should be able to get in anyway, but as a landlord for all the different buildings that we have, and we have a lot of properties in the county, you know, rather than bust through the doors, we should probably just do a schedule and say, we'd like to come in. And that's just, that's, I think, just being courteous and respectful. And if they turn us down. And then if they, and if they, and if they turn us down, this gives us what we need to go further. So just, just like, so I'm just saying, I think that's a, that's the way I would, you know, I would, I think is a good way to go about it. Just so you know, the sheriff was informed many days previous that we wanted access. He was informed that we were coming. So when you're talking about making an appointment, there was no. But there's a difference in, in, I think there's a, more of a formal scheduling. As, rather than say, you know, we're going to be there. That's different from saying, I'd like to schedule an appointment. Okay. And so I, and I, so I, I think there's a difference there. And I think as this, for this body, I think that's, that's an approach that might be worth taking. That's just my opinion. I believe the sheriff's position was, though, that we're not entitled to go in there. He first called it a CIGIS facility, which means it's a protected facility. The gym is not a protected facility. So I think this really, we're just enforcing, we're asking our attorney, giving her authority to take legal action where she deems appropriate. If she doesn't deem it appropriate, she's not going to do it. That's it. I think we all agree on that. Someone want to move it? I'll second it. I have a motion, a second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Show that passing unanimously. I don't think we have anything else. Can I, I didn't want to make comments before. Can I make brief comment now? Sure. Okay. I think some of us wish. Okay. Ms. Mayor, I was there yesterday. I believe that a couple of things I want to say. First of all, in terms of the budget, when you're saying we don't know he's spending it, he keeps saying we need more money, but we don't actually know how much he's getting right now. Because we know how much he gets from the county. We know how much he gets from the cities. I don't know how much he gets from the state, from federal government, from grants, from task forces, et cetera. We don't know his total budget, nor do we know how he spends it, as you have accurately pointed out. It's hard to keep saying, I need more money, I need more money, if he's not going to tell us, you know, how much he has total forfeitures, and where he's spending that. Second, yes. Thank you. We call this meeting for something specific, and I want to make sure we stay to that specific. We've already voted on that item, Commissioner, so now we're just having discussion. I'm just having discussion. I just did not know we were going to have a discussion other than authorized for this action. Okay? The senator wants to... I know my senator wants to speak. I don't want to stop the senator from speaking. I just want to make sure that I'm here for the right reason, not to have any other discussion. I didn't come for any other information, but to support a position that I believe in, without hearing anything else at this time. Okay. That's why. Thank you for interrupting, and now I'm going to finish my remark. The, again, as the mayor said, I've been practicing law for 44 years. I am pretty good at a lot of this stuff. We were served, when the sheriff keeps saying, oh, criminal, we were served with a subpoena ducus tecum, which is just a subpoena to produce records. I guarantee you that the sheriff receives a subpoena ducus tecum at least once a week, because, as a law enforcement official, it's like a public records request, except judicially. That's all that happened, a subpoena to produce records on a study. There can legitimately be virtually no criminal act when all we did was order a study to determine what would be the best. So I throw that out. I think the root problem here is actually money. It's the budget. I think the sheriff wants all of the money, and he can't have all of the money. I have said before that, and I know we all agree, the most important duty of government is to protect its citizens, but that is not the only duty we have as county commissioners. Parks, libraries, mental health, rape crisis, homelessness, cybersecurity. There's a whole long list, and there's one list of numbers I want to read, and then I'm done. In 2025, our county agencies went up 2.7 percent in funding. Broward Sheriff's Office got an 8.7 percent increase. In 2026, our county agencies were funded with a net reduction of 0.07 percent, while the sheriff received 3.1 percent increase. This year, when he's threatening again to appeal like he did last year, our county general fund agencies received a 3.4 percent increase, while BSO got a 6.4 percent increase. The sheriff keeps asking for a higher and higher percentage of our county budget, which would reduce all of our other agencies. And sheriff, you can't keep having a higher percentage of our budget each year. It's unsustainable. So, I hope we can all act in a cooperative fashion. Please stop taking unwarranted and untrue shots at us. Let's try and resolve this professionally. Let's stop the attacks on social media. Let's try and work this out, but we cannot keep giving you a higher percentage of the budget. Period. Thank you. Anybody else? Yes, commissioner. I just want to ask one comment, because I'm okay with supporting this, but I just want to ask administration and the county attorney. Do you understand, I mean, what's the purpose, do you understand the purpose of what we're asking you to do, and do you understand what we're asking you to do? Because I want to make sure that everyone's on the same page. I think we should be entitled to inspect pretty much whatever we want to inspect. I just want to make sure that you guys are on the same page that we're on. I mean, I don't know if there's a, what do you think that we're, like, I'm not voting for you to go tomorrow morning to file a lawsuit. I think you should do what Beam said. But do you understand what we're asking of you? I'll go first, if that's okay. You're voting on it for us. Ms. Ashton. No, I mean, we voted to give her authority to take legal action. That means lawsuit. That means going to court. I understand. But first, what, I mean, do you have to, does our, I've never seen our documents with this. Do we have to provide certain notice if we want to go do an inspection? All that. I want you to make sure that, I want to make sure that we're following what we're supposed to be following. There's also legal action, because we gave her any other legal action authority, because I, from what I understand, on the fire rescue that Commissioner Fisher did, they're not responding to us. You know, there's a transition needed, and there's things that need, and I think our staff will tell us that they're not responding on the vote we took on fire rescue. So we may have to take legal action there. And next week, you know, we have something on the 911 from Commissioner Fisher. And so, you know, I think there's going to be instances soon where we have to go to court. And Monica, did you want to say something about it? Yes, sir. Thank you. So just to clarify, we have sent several emails to BSO administration and command staff asking for coordination meetings for fire rescue since you're meeting and vote on September 22nd, and they have not been responded to at all yet. So we will continue to reach out and request some meetings and coordination efforts. So that might be an example, if it does not, you know, if we continue to not be responded to, that there may be a need for further action. As an example, we will continue to reach out. I saw the floor. That's not what we voted on now. What we voted on was access for the facilities. I'm okay with if we have to do that in the future. But do we understand what we're asking you to do in this motion? Because clearly at this point, what are you asking, what are we asking you to do, and what are you planning on doing to get access to this facility? Well, we also have sent several emails last week asking for access and requesting a tour that we had requested for Monday, for yesterday. Can I interject real quickly to your point? Michael Ruiz sent emails to command staff asking for a tour. It's not like we're just showing up. No, that's good to know. We did the request. We made the request. They ignored it, okay, and then he came out and said they're not doing it. This is a two-part motion. One is regarding the property that we own, and also to take any other legal action necessary to enforce our rights regarding the sheriff. So if we do the transition with fire rescue and they're not getting back, Commissioner Udine, then she appropriately has the authority to go ahead and take the necessary legal action. Mr. Mayor? So we don't have to keep coming back. Just to respond to the commissioner, right, so this is a motion that authorizes us to take legal action, including filing a lawsuit if necessary, but the goal is to gain the access, right? So we will take the steps we need in order to gain that access that we have an entitlement to under a variety of different circumstances, and if we get access, we get access, right? And there's no need to file a suit, but if needed, we now have the authority to do so. Okay. Yes, Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Are you done? Yeah. Sorry. Thank you. I am glad the other attorney on the dais did ask the question that I'm concerned about, because when I read the authorization that we just approved, it did not give me all the details that we're saying, in addition to not gaining access to the facility that we should have access to, there are other things that we are concerned about that the sheriff is not responding to, so this also includes those things. We have a public that is listening to us. We have the press that is listening to us. We need to be very clear as to if the sheriff does not do this, and we are entitled to all of these things happening, and all of our requests being granted, because we are the nine people that the public voted to be in charge for transparency, for us to be working together on all these things. And if it's not happening, in addition to going to court, are we going to the authority that governs the sheriff? If it's not us, then who is that governing authority? Is it the legislators? Who is it? I'm just asking the question. So it's the courts? Straight from here to the courts? No other recourse, no other recourse, through the legislators, telling them that this deal they worked out with the sheriffs years ago is not working. It's not transparent. We can't audit. We can't do any of those things that we're supposed to be doing. Everyone is looking at me strange. I love how you guys look at me. But I'm asking the question. Be straight. What are we doing here? Well, the only recourse I believe, and the council can contradict it, is if he doesn't comply with requests, then we give letters under the official records request, doesn't comply with that, then our option is court. Just the court, between us and the sheriff. We could ask our lobbyists when it's in session to try to change the law, but I don't think we're going to be successful in that. But right now, it's just having a judge, whether we want access to our building or we want access to documents, if someone doesn't turn it over, the only option I'm aware of, council, unless you know something else, is going to court. And how did we, just asking? Please, please. Because, you know, I come from a city that had BSO also as their fire and also as their police, and we transferred and went into BSO doing everything. So I understand what we did, and there has to be something from the legislature or some agreement that dictates what the sheriff should do and what our responsibilities are. What is that document? There's no such. I see attorney. Florida statutes. Look at me. Yes. Oh, Florida statutes. That's legislation, isn't it, Mr. Senator? Yeah. Okay, so that statute that we have does not give us the right beyond going to court. I'm not saying not to go to court, but I did not hear anything prior to going to court that speaks to let's go seriously, let's go to the legislature and inform them as to what is not working so that can be looked at. I don't know. So, Mr. Rogers, from my understanding is that we can make a written request and certain things he doesn't have to give us by law. Once we do a records request, regardless, he has to provide those records. If they're public records, he has to provide them, and if he doesn't provide the public records, anybody, agency, if we don't provide public records within a certain time frame, the next step would be to go to court and have a court get involved to order such issuance of those documents. Okay, one last question, final question. If, while you're doing the court process, what are we doing as a legislatively to notify the legislators that, based on statute, whatever that is, our sheriff is not abiding by any of those? When does that process happen? We talked to Monica. We have a legislative team that you want to address. So, we certainly can do it a couple of ways, Commissioner. One way I would suggest is if this body chooses to have in our legislative program to request a change to statute, we can have that on our legislative priorities for the board, which we can bring as suggested or proposed policy direction that you guys may want to consider. And if you guys would like, we can certainly send a letter, if it is the will of the board, to the legislature, to the principals of the Senate president and Speaker of the House to notify them. You know, I just don't know that the, you know, the constitutional officer does not report to the legislature. So, I think that would probably be governed by the constitution of the state, but I will defer to Ms. Ashton, our county attorney. I mean, I don't understand the question as far as a notice, per se, to the legislature, because the sheriff does not, or any of the constitutionals, do not report to the legislature. That's correct, and Ms. Sappero's point about making a legislative delegation change is probably our only recourse legislatively. Mr. Mayor. Yes, are you done, Commissioner Rogers? I don't know if I'm getting to my colleagues to say, I'm not saying not to do what you're currently doing. I'm saying there's also putting the legislature... Additional things. ...noticed. There are other things that we can be doing simultaneously. I'm just saying. Absolutely. It's not one way. And legislatively, there's a state legislation that governs certain things. So, let them know it's not working while we're doing other things that we choose to do. I just believe we need to notify everyone else. Thank you, Commissioner. Yes, Steve. Just Representative... Commissioner Rogers, Representative Rogers, you spent eight years in the legislature where you were an excellent representative. You know, unfortunately, we opposed the Florida Association of counties, every county that I know of opposed the legislation, which only passed three or four years ago, which gave the sheriffs the ability to move money around however they wanted in the budget. This occurred after a Florida Supreme Court case involving Alachua County, Gainesville, where the sheriff was moving money unilaterally. Alachua County sued the sheriff. Alachua County sued the sheriff. Alachua County sued the sheriff. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the county. Alachua County, so the sheriffs promptly went to Tallahassee and got the law changed over the objections of every county in the state. Sheriffs, as you well know, are immensely powerful, the Florida Sheriffs Association and the legislature. And they passed this recently, and there's virtually no chance that they're going to change that to help Broward County out, that the one bright blue county in the state, you know, and I know that's not really going to happen. They're not going to overrule the sheriffs. Okay? Can I just... I don't want to... Yes, Commissioner Dean. So I think sometimes when we talk about this, we mix a lot of things up in the same conversation. So I think what Senator Gellar and Commissioner Robert Rogers are talking about, the sheriff's core budget is really what that's all about. How do we get answers to what we're doing with other things? I think that's kind of what we've been doing. The fire budget is a contractual service. The airport is a contractual service. The seaport is a contractual service. At 911, the same thing. We have a contract. They can't move the money around in those things, the same way they can't take Lauderdale Lake's police budget and move that into Parkland's police budget. These are separate contracts that are determined by the courts. So if we determine that they're not following the contract that we have, that's where Commissioner Bogan or Mayor Bogan's point comes in. We have the opportunity to bring this to court to do this. As to the thing that we voted on here with access to the building, I am pretty confident if access is asked by the sheriff, if you need professional staff people to go into that building, before a lawsuit's filed, they're going to let you go into that building. There would be almost no leg to stand on to not let a senior member of leadership in the county administration. I don't know if it's Tracy Jackson or if it's Brett or if it's people that are in that discipline to go into that building. That will happen. If it doesn't happen, then fire away with the lawsuits. But you're going to get a response where they're going to let you in. They may not let in. You know, they're using the guise of the fact that we received a subpoena to not let us in and to not let those people in there. I think that's incorrect for a lot of reasons, and I don't think that that's the thing that makes any sense in this whole episode. We're allowed to look at fire rescue. There's only two counties in the state that let the sheriff do fire rescue. I was here in 2003 sitting in the audience when they talked about this, and they talked about these exact problems back in 2003. What if you don't want to do this? How do you get that service back? And the list goes on and on. I think we should be able to work collaboratively with all the constitutional officers. If we can't, then we escalate. Any others? This meeting is adjourned.