The Sarasota County School Board has filed a lawsuit against Sarasota Tax Collector Mike Moran, claiming his office kept over $2 million in millage funding that voters believed was designated for school operational purposes only.
The funds were taken by the Tax Collector’s Office as a “commission” – or a fee – for collecting ad valorem taxes. In a letter to the School Board that was included in the filing, Moran said his office was statutorily authorized to extract the commissions.
“The gross and unilateral divestment and misappropriation of funds by the Tax Collector has real and detrimental effects on the ability of the School Board to adequately provide for its students and to employ resident staff and educators,” the School Board said in the lawsuit.
The School Board also stated that Moran’s “unauthorized” actions have already led to limits on employee health care benefits as well as staff reductions.
In an email to the Herald-Tribune, Moran said his office suggested “that the School Board wait until the Florida Attorney General issued its opinion on the matter which would save the taxpayers money, but apparently, they would rather spend money on attorneys than the children.”
The lawsuit – filed April 24, and with its contents verified by Superintendent Terry Connor’s signature –comes at a time when 136 teachers currently do not have positions for next year due to budget cutbacks and declining enrollment. However, a union leader said that number could decrease in the upcoming months as teachers retire or move.
Meanwhile, the Tax Collector’s Office budget of nearly $15 million for 2025-26 was a 34% increase over the previous year. The budget includes $2.2 million for a software upgrade, Moran said at a recent county workshop.
In a letter to the school district Moran said that Florida statute allows for the Tax Collector’s Office to take a commission for collecting ad valorem taxes. Commissions help fund operating costs for the office and are generally paid by the taxing authority, which is the School Board, Moran wrote.
The only exception is when it is “non-voted millage.” Then, commissions are paid to the Tax Collector by the Sarasota County Commission.
Moran wrote in a letter to the School Board that “it appears that the Board of County Commissioners began paying the voter-approved commission on behalf of the School Board approximately 23 years ago.
“The reasons for this arrangement remain unclear to me and there is no indication that this departure from statutory process was ever approved, ratified, revised or corrected in subsequent years.”
The School Board claims that no local government entity – including the county commission – has ever paid commissions to the Tax Collector dating back to 2002, when the tax referendum was first approved by Sarasota County voters.
The School Board claims that “every penny” of millage funds have gone to school operational purposes only, and that the board has “never been charged, billed or required to remit any commission on the voted millage during this entire period.”
How much did the Sarasota Tax Collector keep?
Between Nov. 12, 2025, and March 12, 2026, the Tax Collector’s Office made seven deposits in a School Board bank account, and kept a total of $2,055,798.05 as commissions, court records show.
In each of those transactions, the Tax Collector’s Office kept 2% of the taxes it collected.
For example, on Nov. 25, 2025, a transaction statement shows $39,812,836.94 in taxes had been collected, and the Tax Collector took $796,256.74 as a commission for collecting those taxes.
“Despite the Tax Collector’s justification of the commission by stating that he must maintain statutory compliance, the governing statute does not require the taking of any commission whatsoever and he does so at his sole discretion,” the lawsuit stated.
In the lawsuit, the School Board contends that commissions have not been paid to the Tax Collector or the County Commission for the past 23 years, and when the referenda appeared on ballots over the last two decades, taxpayers voted on whether funding would be utilized by the school district, and not for the Tax Collector’s budget.
“The voters reasonably expected that the funds collected by the voter-approved millage would be paid in their entirety to the School Board and not to the Tax Collector,” the lawsuit stated. “The Tax Collector’s proposed diversion of these trust funds to inflate his own budget by more than one-third violates the fundamental trust-fund principle that protects the taxpayers of Sarasota County.
“The Tax Collector should not now be permitted to inflate his budget by more than one-third on the backs of the Sarasota County electorate and Sarasota County schools.”
The language of the referendum on the last ballot in 2024 was as follows:
“Shall the Sarasota County School District continue the 1 mill per year ad valorem millage to retain and recruit quality teachers; provide workforce training; improve school safety and security; preserve the arts; upgrade technology and classroom resources; fund other education programs and school operational needs; beginning July 1, 2026 and ending June 30, 2030; and sharing funds with charter schools proportionate with student enrollment, with oversight of all funds by an independent committee of citizens?”
The 2024 referendum passed with 84% of the vote, the highest in the state.
What is the millage rate in Sarasota County?
Sarasota County’s longstanding millage referendum, which generates funds for the school district through a surtax, goes back to 2002.
The millage tax equals $1 for every $1,000 assessed on a property, which means the school district would net $300 from a property with an assessed value of $300,000.
The referendum has been at a rate of 1 mill since its inception.
The surtax that was most recently reapproved in the 2024 election starts on July 1, 2026, and runs through 2030. It is projected to generate an estimated $114 million each year that it is in effect.
In the current school year, that would be about 7% of the school district’s $1.65 billion budget, according to the district website.
Along with the School Board, Sarasota residents Lori Verier and Joseph Dunn are listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs are asking a judge for a permanent injunction that would prevent the Tax Collector’s Office from taking any more commissions and are seeking repayment of the funds already extracted.
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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota’s School Board files lawsuit against Tax Collector’s Office
Reporting by Chris Anderson, Sarasota Herald-Tribune / Sarasota Herald-Tribune
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