Escambia County / Legal

First Tee, Food Pantry Pull the Trigger—Suit Filed Against Clerk Childers

After Childers missed today’s deadline to release $7,000 in commission-approved funds, Greater Pensacola Junior Golf Association and the Warrington Emergency Aid Center filed a state complaint Friday seeking a court order, declaratory relief and her personal repayment of years of similar payments.

The deadline came and went. Escambia County Clerk of Court Pam Childers did not release the $7,000 in county funds that the Board of County Commissioners had unanimously approved for two Pensacola nonprofits—and today, those nonprofits made good on their promise to sue.

• The Greater Pensacola Junior Golf Association (doing business as First Tee Gulf Coast) and the Warrington Emergency Aid Center (WEAC) filed a complaint today in the Circuit Court of the First Judicial Circuit in and for Escambia County, seeking a writ of mandamus to compel Childers to issue payment, declaratory judgment, and personal liability under Florida Statute § 129.09. Read 246771410 Complaint.

“The contributions to charities like First Tee Gulf Coast and WEAC have either always been unlawful, or you are obliged to pay them as a ministerial act. If they have always been unlawful, as you now contend, you are personally liable to the County for their repayment.”
—Attorney Alex Andrade, Moore, Hill & Westmoreland

What Was Filed—and Why

The complaint, filed by attorney Alexander Andrade of Moore, Hill & Westmoreland, charges Childers with violating her ministerial duties as county comptroller by refusing to issue two commission-directed payments:

• $4,500 to First Tee Gulf Coast — appropriated to support the nonprofit’s youth golf programs, approved at Commission meetings in February and March 2025.
• $2,500 to WEAC — a reimbursement for documented food-pantry expenses, approved by the Commission in October 2025 and denied by Childers in a March 9, 2026, email to Commissioner Mike Kohler.

Both organizations are IRS-designated 501(c)3 public charities. The complaint notes they submitted the required county forms identifying the public need they would serve—food security for WEAC, youth recreation for First Tee—before the Commission voted on the appropriations.

The Core Legal Arguments

The ministerial duty claim. The complaint draws on more than a century of Florida case law holding that the clerk of court, when acting as county comptroller, performs a ministerial function—not a discretionary one. Under Florida Statute § 129.09, the clerk may refuse to sign a warrant only when a payment exceeds the expenditure allowed by law, constitutes an illegal charge, or is not authorized by law or ordinance.

• Andrade argues none of those conditions apply here. The Commission has clear statutory authority under § 125.01 to fund recreational and health-and-welfare programs, and Florida courts—most notably in City of Boca Raton v. Gidman—have held that local governments may fund nonprofits whose services serve a valid public purpose.

The personal liability trap. The sharpest legal edge in the filing—introduced in the April 14 demand letter and now formalized in the complaint—turns Childers’ own position against her. The same § 129.09 she cites to justify denials also imposes strict civil liability on any clerk who signs warrants for unlawful payments. The statute requires no finding of intent—only proof that a payment fell into a prohibited category. If Childers is right that youth-golf and food-pantry funding is unlawful, then every similar payment she signed going back years is equally unlawful—and she owes the County every dollar.

• The complaint cites a sample of payments Childers herself flagged as problematic in her April 2025 post-payment review, totaling $25,250, and notes that a full accounting of over $600,000 in discretionary spending since 2020 could reveal additional liability.

What Childers Has Said

Childers has not been shy about her position. In a March 9 email to Commissioner Kohler, she wrote that this type of “generous giving comes voluntarily from the people of Escambia County and not from our government deciding to gift or donate tax revenues unconnected with County programs.”

• In an April 4 Pensacola News Journal op-ed, she laid out a broader constitutional theory rooted in Florida’s 1971 Dickinson v. Stone ruling—arguing that tax dollars raised for county purposes must be spent for county purposes, and that discretionary fund spending on golf tournaments, charity galas, and school athletic uniforms serves private rather than governmental ends.

Her bottom line, stated in her April 2025 memo to the Commission: “Should I not agree that the mission of County government will be served through the expenditure, the payment will be denied.” That sentence is now Exhibit F in the lawsuit.

Why the Stakes Reach Beyond $7,000

The outcome will answer two questions that extend well past these two nonprofits. First: can a county clerk substitute her constitutional-law judgment for the commission’s on what counts as a valid public purpose? Second: if years of accepted practice are now recast as unlawful spending, who is on the hook for the tab?