Escambia County / Legal

First Tee and Warrington Food Pantry Give Clerk Childers 10 Days to Pay Up or Face Mandamus Suit

A Pensacola law firm says the clerk’s refusal to cut $7,000 in checks the County Commission already approved isn’t just wrong—it exposes her to personal liability for every discretionary payment she’s signed since 2016. First Tee’s executive director says suit will follow if Childers doesn’t release the money by Friday.

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A youth golf nonprofit and a Warrington food pantry have hired outside counsel to force Escambia County Clerk of Court Pam Childers to release $7,000 in appropriations the Board of County Commissioners unanimously approved, setting a Friday, April 24 deadline before they file suit.

• In an April 14 demand letter, attorney Alex Andrade of Moore, Hill & Westmoreland notified Childers that his clients—the Greater Pensacola Junior Golf Association (First Tee Gulf Coast) and the Warrington Emergency Aid Center (WEAC)—are prepared to seek a writ of mandamus and, in the alternative, declaratory relief and Childers’ personal reimbursement of every similar discretionary payment her office has issued since at least 2016. See 2026-04-14 Demand Letter on Behalf of FTGC and WEAC.

The case turns a spotlight on a long-simmering dispute between Childers and the commission over so-called “discretionary funds”—the $50,000-per-commissioner line items used to support community nonprofits, churches, schools, and charitable events.

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The Blocked Payments

In 2025, Childers’ office notified First Tee Gulf Coast that it would not sign the warrant for a $4,500 appropriation the commission had approved to support the nonprofit’s youth golf programs.

On March 9, 2026, Childers emailed Commissioner Mike Kohler to say her office would not reimburse WEAC for its $2,500 appropriation, despite the commission’s October 2025 approval and WEAC’s submission of documented food-pantry expenses.

“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,” Childers wrote in the March 9 denial email.

Childers pointed Kohler to her April 23, 2025, Post-Payment Review of Discretionary Fund Expenditures, in which she told the commission she would “heavily scrutinize” such payments and deny any she did not believe served “the mission of County government.”

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Childers’ Case: “Not Yours to Give”

In an April 4 viewpoint published by the Pensacola News Journal under the headline “Discretionary spending is not yours to give, Commissioners,” Childers laid out her constitutional theory driving the denials.

Her position rests on Florida’s limits on how tax dollars can be used. The most recent flashpoint, she wrote, came when she refused to cut a check for basketball gear for the Booker T. Washington High School girls’ program.

• Her reasoning: School sports equipment is a school purpose, not a county purpose, and therefore cannot be funded with county property tax revenues. Childers cites the Florida Supreme Court’s 1971 ruling in Dickinson v. Stone, which established that tax dollars raised for a specific purpose must be spent for that same purpose.

The broader pattern, in her telling: Commissioners’ discretionary funds—recently rebranded by the County as “Community Support Funds”—have functioned as individual slush funds for years, financing golf tournaments, charity galas and fundraising events that serve private rather than governmental purposes.

As the County’s constitutional auditor, Childers argues she is duty-bound to move from routine deference to active scrutiny when spending within a defined budget category drifts increasingly toward waste, fraud and abuse.

Some commissioners have characterized the standoff as a power struggle. Childers frames it as a matter of fiscal accountability and fidelity to Florida law. 

• Commissioner Ashlee Hofberger —whose district includes Booker T. Washington High School—has come out in support of Childers’ position.

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Andrade’s Argument: The Clerk’s Job Is Ministerial

The demand letter builds its case on a foundation Florida courts have laid down for more than a century: the clerk of court, when acting as county comptroller, performs a ministerial function, not a discretionary one.

• The statutory framework: Florida Statute § 125.01 grants county commissions the power to provide recreational programs and health and welfare programs, and to expend funds in furtherance of those powers. The Florida Supreme Court in Speer v. Olson held that the statute gives counties “full authority to act through the exercise of home rule power.”

The public purpose test: Under City of Boca Raton v. Gidman, a local government may fund nonprofits whose services serve a valid public purpose. Andrade argues both youth recreation (First Tee) and food security (WEAC) fit squarely within the categories the Legislature and the courts have endorsed.

• The ministerial clerk: Andrade cites a line of cases stretching from Clark-Ray-Johnson Co. v. Schultz (1923) through Phillips v. Pritchett Trucking, Inc. (2021), holding that the clerk’s record-keeping and payment functions are ministerial duties “devoid of discretion.”

Under § 129.09, the clerk may refuse to issue a warrant only in narrow circumstances—payments that exceed the expenditure allowed by law, pay an illegal charge, or pay a claim not authorized by law. Andrade’s position: once an expenditure clears that threshold, the clerk must sign.

• The commission’s $4,500 grant to First Tee was not in excess of any expenditure allowed by law.
• The $2,500 WEAC reimbursement was not an illegal charge against the County.
• Neither payment was unauthorized by law or ordinance.

“The determination of what serves a county purpose is one which the county’s elected commissioners, as ‘the legislative body of the county’ must make,” Andrade wrote. “You do not possess a discretionary veto over funding decisions in the same way Florida’s Governor possesses a veto over state funding decisions.”

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The Counterweight: Childers’ Personal Liability Theory

The letter’s sharpest edge is its second half, which flips Childers’ own statute back on her.

Section 129.09 cuts both ways. The same statute Childers cites as her authority to deny payments also imposes strict personal liability on any clerk who signs warrants for unlawful payments. The statute requires no finding of intent for civil liability—only proof that a payment fell within one of the prohibited categories.

• Andrade’s logic is a trap constructed from Childers’ own reasoning: if she now believes the First Tee and WEAC payments are unlawful, then every materially identical payment she has signed since taking office is also unlawful—and she is personally liable to the County for the full amount of each one.

The letter lists a “sample” of payments Childers herself flagged as problematic in her April 23, 2025, review:

“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.”

Andrade accompanied the demand letter with a Chapter 119 public records request seeking an accounting of every discretionary or Community Support Fund payment Childers has authorized since January 8, 2013.

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The Underlying Policy Fight

Childers’ April 23, 2025, memo to the commission—authored with her general counsel, Codey Leigh—urged the board to cease entirely budgeting and expending General Fund dollars via the discretionary method.

• The report argued the risk of misuse is high and cataloged expenditures the clerk’s office deemed problematic: funds used to purchase 552 wine glasses for a PBS gala, sponsorship recognition tied to individual commissioners, and donations for school athletic uniforms that the memo characterized as serving a“school purpose” rather than a “county purpose.”

Leigh’s legal review leaned heavily on Florida’s constitutional no-aid provision for religious institutions and on O’Neill’s, which requires a “clearly identified and concrete public purpose for any aid to private organizations.

Childers’ bottom line in that memo: “Should I not agree that the mission of County government will be served through the expenditure, the payment will be denied.”

It’s that single sentence that Andrade quotes back to her as the basis for the mandamus action.

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What Happens Next

Andrade set a Friday, April 24, 2026, deadline (tomorrow) for Childers to either issue the payments or begin a personal refund to the County covering all similarly situated prior payments.

• Marty Stanovich, executive director of First Tee Gulf Coast, told Inweekly the nonprofit will file suit if Childers does not release the funds by the deadline.

Failing that, the letter promises a lawsuit seeking:

• A writ of mandamus compelling Childers to issue the First Tee and WEAC warrants;
• Declaratory relief clarifying the clerkclerk’sority under § 129.09; and
• Personal reimbursement from Childers for all similar discretionary payments issued since 2016.

The commission has separately asked the Florida Attorney General for an opinion on Childers’ authority to veto appropriations that the board has approved. Andrade notes in the letter that  “every AGO I’ve reviewed exhibits Florida’s Attorney Generals giving far more deference to the role of the county commission” than Childers’ current position allows.

• Why this matters: The outcome will reach well beyond two small nonprofit checks. It will determine whether Childers can substitute her judgment for a county commission’s on questions of public purpose, and whether years of accepted practice can be retroactively rewritten as years of unlawful spending—checks that Childers will have to personally reimburse taxpayers.

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