Accountability
The Hunt for Escambia Clerk’s Budget
Pam Childers’ office budget has jumped 62% in five years, but her public records team hasn’t produced a detailed breakdown of where the money goes.
Escambia County posts the adopted budget for the next fiscal year — Oct. 1, 2026 through Sept. 30, 2027 — on myescambia.com, along with adopted budgets for the past five years.
- The county’s department budgets are listed in detail. But the Escambia Clerk & Comptroller and several other constitutional officers appear only as a single line-item figure.
In reviewing the Clerk’s annual budget, I found significant growth over the past five years, with no explanation offered on her website.
Her budget has increased $2.19 million from FY 2021-2022 to FY 2025-2026 — a 62% jump.
- FY 2021-2022: $3,528,723
- FY 2022-2023: $4,009,701
- FY 2023-2024: $4,772,829
- FY 2024-2025: $5,458,815
- FY 2025-2026: $5,717,583
- FY 2026-2027: $5,610,882
The statement from Clerk Pam Childers that accompanies her budget request does not tell taxpayers why her budget has grown.
- However, her statement has evolved. The FY 2021-2022 version reassured residents that their courthouse and their money were in good, tech-savvy hands. The FY 2026-2027 version reads as a defense of institutional authority—heavy on constitutional citation, audit oversight, and a hard number (926 functions) that essentially argues “look how much statutory work this office does.”
But nothing about why her services cost over $2 million more than at the start of this decade.
The Hunt
Her website offers no answers. I checked Childers’ website. Her annual budget isn’t available there.
Last Thursday, I filed a public records request with the clerk’s office for the annual budgets and actuals for the past four years. Yesterday, I received the one-line total already published in the county’s adopted budget.
- My response: “This is not what I requested. I want the full budget listing of all expense categories, not one all-encompassing figure that provides no detail.”
I received this reply:
Dear Richard Outzen:
I will reach back out to our Legal Department to see if there is a more detailed document to provide.
Sincerely,
Eric Schwartz (COC), Deputy Clerk
Public Records Center
So I wait.
TheGisbon,
Nice try, but the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report doesn’t show the Clerk’s detailed budget or the detailed budgets of the Board of County Commissioners or the other constitutional officers. Her expenditures in the reports on your link are in two categories: General Government and Court-related – not much information for taxpayers. Try again. -Rick
Archive Center • Annual Comprehensive Financial Report https://share.google/OiknhXnbrtbLiQN1L
Here you go since research is hard.
ChatGPT’s interpretation of Melissa’s comment.
“Here’s a plain-English version that keeps the frustration and criticism, but makes it much easier to follow:
The question needs to be asked:
Why has the BCC allowed these huge increases to the Clerk/Comptroller’s budget, especially considering what that office has been doing over the past few years?
And that leads to another important question:
Why approve another budget increase this year?
Why not actually reduce the budget for that office based on the financial problems and disruption it has caused the County and the community? Maybe having less money to work with would limit the damage.
And, as a bonus, watching Hofberger twist herself into knots trying to get more money for her mother is pretty hard to watch.
These budget increases also highlight a larger problem: the County Attorney’s office has been far too willing to accommodate the Clerk instead of pushing back. That has helped create a bureaucracy that has become increasingly obstructive and difficult for the County to control.
Hopefully, when there is a change in the County Attorney’s office in January, we will finally see some stronger and more effective legal pushback from the County.
The BCC has a responsibility to protect taxpayer money. That means putting reasonable limits on how the Clerk can use public funds, especially when those funds are being used in ways that create more conflict and expense for the County. Taxpayers should not have to rely on outside groups to step in and protect their interests.
It is long past time for the BCC to take responsibility for this situation.
Being dragged into a lawsuit that the County should have filed itself, and should have filed years ago, is not a good reason to keep giving the Clerk an ever-larger budget. That money can become a war chest for more legal battles against the BCC and, ultimately, the taxpayers they represent.
Whether some members of the BCC recognize how much taxpayer money is being wasted or not, the situation has reached the point where they need to stop worrying about whether everyone will understand or agree with them.
They need to start taking action to fix what has become a serious and growing problem.”
The question has to be asked:
Why on God’s green earth has the BCC been *allowing* these gross increases to her budget, particularly in the context of what the Clerk/Comptroller’s office has been perpetrating the last few years?
And on the heels of that question, one that should be taken very seriously:
*WHY* vote to approve her budget increases this year?
In fact, why not *lower* the budget of her office to correspond with the financial havoc and chaos she is wreaking in the County and in the community? Maybe with less budget at her disposal, she could do less harm.
Bonus: watching Hofberger stand on her head to try to shovel her momma that money.
These budget increases shine a spotlight on the appeasement and lack of stomach in the County Attorney’s office that has in effect *grown* this bureaucratic monster to such absurd levels of runaway obstructionism and unchecked autocracy.
Hopefully with some fresh energy and will power, come the changeout of the attorney’s office in January, *something* resembling effective legal pushback from the County will start happening.
The BCC has a fiduciary responsibility to put every possible restraint on the Clerk’s ability to sew chaos not just *on* taxpayer money, but *with* taxpayer money, and not expect independent charities to protect the taxpayers for them.
It is way beyond time for the BCC to step back up to the plate on this. Getting dragged kicking and screaming into a lawsuit that they should have brought themselves, and a long time ago, is no excuse to continue to subvent in increasingly large amounts her war chest, which is being stockpiled for the very purpose of aiming her “constitutional” guns back at not just them, but the taxpayers they represent.
Whether some of them recognize the money that is being squandered by her retributive rage and thirst for power, or not. At some point, the BCC needs to just stop worrying about whether the populist portion of our citizenry gets this, and start forcefully moving to correct the burgeoning disaster.
Now can you do this with the rest of the county as well!