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.

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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.

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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:

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So I wait.