Council, Elections chief approve transition plan

Posted On: January 21, 2020

The Volusia County Council took a major step Tuesday to restructure county government in accordance with a ballot initiative approved by Florida voters in 2018. Paving the way for the eventual implementation of the changes a year from now, the council ratified an agreement with Volusia County Supervisor of Elections Lisa Lewis that spells out how her department will operate once the supervisor goes from being an elected department head to an independent, constitutional officer on Jan. 5, 2021.

Lewis heads one of four departments that will be affected by the changes. The other three are the Sheriff’s Office, the Property Appraiser’s Office and the Tax Collector’s Office. Although Volusia County is pursuing a legal challenge asking the courts to clarify whether the ballot initiative applies here, county officials are still moving forward with an implementation plan to ensure an orderly transition in time for next January’s deadline. Tuesday’s approval of a five-page memorandum of agreement with Lewis was a milestone in the preparations.

The changes are being prompted by a statewide constitutional initiative that was passed in 2018 with 63.2 percent of the vote. While the initiative was titled “State and Local Government Structure and Operation,’’ it’s more commonly known as Amendment 10. The memorandum of agreement was ironed out by Lewis and County Manager George Recktenwald in order to identify the operational and structural changes that will take place at the Department of Elections if the courts rule that the amendment applies to Volusia County. Both Recktenwald and Lewis said they shared a goal of making the transition seamless and the changes virtually unnoticeable to the public in the way they receive services from the county. They’re also trying to minimize any fiscal impacts as well. Recktenwald created an 11-member staff transition team to help work through the complicated process.

“Our goal is to do this in such a way that it’s very seamless to the public – they don’t see anything,” said Recktenwald. “This is something that we will work very hard behind the scenes to make sure our citizens are served.”

For her part, Lewis said she wants to make sure that the transition to constitutional status doesn’t cause any unnecessary budget impacts. Instead of taking over all services, she has agreed to continue using many existing county services, like payroll and legal. And Recktenwald agreed that made good fiscal sense, particularly for a smaller department. The Department of Elections has a total of 32 fulltime employees.

“As I’ve said before: If it’s not broke, why fix it. It works for us,” Lewis told the County Council. “We are all one county. The money comes from the citizens.”

It all sounded good to County Chair Ed Kelley, who told Lewis: “I’m happy for your cooperation.”

Under the agreement, effective Jan. 5, 2021, elections department employees will no longer be county employees. Instead, they will become employees of the Supervisor of Elections and be subject to the personnel rules established by the elections department. The affected employees will be able to take any accrued leave time with them.

While the supervisor of elections will have the authority to operate independently of county government, Lewis has decided to contract with the county in order to continue using certain existing county services, such as financial services like payroll, budget and accounting, business services, janitorial and fleet management, community information, human resources, legal services, information technology and internal auditor services. Other provisions of the agreement include the following:

• The County will provide and pay for necessary office space for the principal office and location of permanent records.
• With the concurrence of the County Council, the supervisor of election will be allowed to open branch offices outside of the county seat in DeLand for election business. However, the costs would come out of the supervisor of elections budget.
• The supervisor of elections will be responsible for the cost of equipping and maintaining the primary office as well as any branch offices.

In March, the Supervisor of Elections is scheduled to relocate their primary office in DeLand from the county’s historic courthouse to a leased site at 1750 S. Woodland Blvd.