When County Clerk Pam Childers won the 401a lawsuit, she demanded three commissioners who were in the fund to hand the money in their retirement accounts over to her. The funds included the same contributions that would have been made to their Florida Retirement System but without the deduction for the FRS overhead. Bender was in the 401a plan the longest, which explains why his check was the most.
| Bender | $ 143,491 |
| Barry | $ 28,586 |
| May | $ 25,076 |
| $ 197,153 |
Now, the commissioners receive the same contribution as before but it goes into accounts with FRS. The retirement contributions paid by the taxpayers are the same, regardless of the plan.
- When the PNJ reported the reimbursement in May, Childer shared something curious. The reimbursement would have been $390,000 if she hadn’t stopped making contributions in January 2022. Why that specific number?
Because her legal bills for the lawsuit were over $438K – something the PNJ never asked her.
| 1/30/22 | 110731 | $ 458.75 |
| 2/28/22 | 110915 | $ 11,213.75 |
| 3/27/22 | 111257 | $ 2,703.25 |
| 4/30/22 | 111405 | $ 12,137.25 |
| 5/30/22 | 111731 | $ 2,593.50 |
| 6/26/22 | 111802 | $ 32,565.00 |
| 7/31/22 | 112223 | $ 4,264.75 |
| 8/24/22 | 112267 | $ 10,686.07 |
| 9/25/22 | 112459 | $ 9,924.75 |
| 9/30/22 | 112586 | $ 6,212.50 |
| 10/25/22 | 112677 | $ 20,495.25 |
| 11/30/22 | 112936 | $ 46,990.50 |
| 1/6/23 | 113384 | $ 40,983.00 |
| 1/27/23 | 113829 | $ 542.50 |
| 1/31/23 | 113837 | $ – |
| 2/28/23 | 114216 | $ 269.50 |
| 2/28/23 | 114383 | $ 57.00 |
| 3/31/23 | 114463 | $ 37,920.00 |
| 4/30/23 | 114653 | $ – |
| 5/31/23 | 115091 | $ 1,957.20 |
| 10/1/23 | 116059 | $ 531.25 |
| 12/1/23 | 116529 | $ 1,181.25 |
| 1/2/24 | 116708 | $ 833.75 |
| 1/31/24 | 117133 | $ 3,555.00 |
| 2/29/24 | 117289 | $ 97,235.53 |
| 3/31/24 | 117545 | $ 29,443.50 |
| 4/30/24 | 118013 | $ 1,641.00 |
| Fleming | $ 376,395.80 | |
| Dannheisser | $ 61,992.00 | |
| Total | $ 438,387.80 | |
But, Rick
Childers may argue that she had to hire the attorneys. However, Fleming stretched the case over two years with motions that he repeatedly lost, driving up his bills. He could have gone to trial in the spring of 2022, saving taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- Why didn’t Childers rein him in and demand they go to trial?
- Why wasn’t she monitoring the bills?
- She also had the option of using her in-house attorney, Codey Leigh.
- She also had the option of joining the commissioners in asking for an Attorney General’s opinion.
- Did she drag out the lawsuit so that the ruling would be announced in the 2024 election cycle?
These are hardly the actions of a good steward of taxpayers’ dollars.