ORLANDO, Fla. — Orange County Supervisor of Elections Glen Gilzean is suing the Orange County Government and Orange County Comptroller Phil Diamond, after an ongoing battle that involved commissioners voting to shut off funding to his office earlier this week.
On Thursday night, Gilzean filed a civil case against the county requesting the immediate release of "the December 2024 Budget allocation" funds to the Orange County Supervisor of Elections, including "all future monthly allocations of funding of its 2024-2025 Budget allocation."
In the lawsuit, Gilzean argues that once the budget is approved, and all conditions have been met, the county and Diamond do not have the authority to withhold money.
A spokesperson for Orange County said the county does not comment on pending litigation.
Gilzean noted in documents that by withholding the funds, not only does the county not have the authority to do so, but that his staff is also at risk of being impacted.
“These individuals expect and have a right to be paid for their services, and the comptroller’s refusal to disburse budgeted funds to the supervisor, threatens his ability to pay these workers,” he said.
Orange County Comptroller who oversees the county’s financial operations, has said there is more than $4 million in the SOE’s bank account to pay employees.
But in a letter to Diamond, Gilzean said the dispute over funding to the supervisor of elections office "has placed our office's finance is significant peril." In years past, Gilzean said the office has received reimbursement within the first five days each month to pay vendors' invoices.
This all stems from concerns expressed by Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings regarding surplus funds that Gilzean used on scholarships. Of the $4 million surplus the elections’ office received after the election, Gilzean used $2.1 million to fund debt-free scholarships to Valencia College students.
According to Gilzean, his office initially returned about $700,000 to the county from that surplus.
But Demings said Gilzean should have returned the excess money to the county first, and then asked to use the funds to allow some kind of due process. However, Gilzean claims that it was well within his right and authority as elections supervisor to make that call.
CareerSource also received $1.9 million in additional funding, but in the wake of this feud, that money has been returned.
On Tuesday, the Orange County commission voted unanimously to withhold any additional funding from the Supervisor of Elections Office because of alleged misuse of funds. Diamond’s office has been combing through Gilzean’s financials over questions regarding spending on non-budgetary expenses.
However, Gilzean said he has nothing to hide.
“Florida statutes 129.201 clearly states that I have the authority to utilize these resources in the best interest of the office,” Gilzean said in an interview with Ybeth Bruzual on Spectrum News’ Political Connections.
With Orange County being the fourth-largest county in the state, Gilzean said his goal for this past election season was to use extra funds to invest back into the people of Orange County and increase voter participation among the younger generation.
“In a nutshell, as we saw in the last election cycle, we desperately needed to increase early voting sites and with this contract, what this does, it adds six additional new sites,” Gilzean explained during a press conference on Tuesday.
Diamond said that he will provide Demings and Orange County commissioners with an update of the records to determine whether there have been any inappropriate spending of funds at the next county commission meeting.
Spectrum News 13 reached out to Demings for a response about Gilzean’s lawsuit and has not heard back yet.