INDIAN RIVER COUNTY —The deadlock between county commissioners and Sheriff Eric Flowers continues.
Flowers wants the County Commission to reallocate about $2.5 million — money unspent from last year’s budget — back o the Sheriff’s Office to help meet his budget request for 2025-2026, according to a Nov. 13 letter he sent to commissioners.
Other constitutional officers — such as the elections supervisor, clerk of courts, tax collector and property appraiser — also return unspent money from their previous year’s budgets, and it goes into the county’s general operational budget.
For his part, Flowers returned about $1.4 million, including about $495,000 from purchases made last year but not yet received.
On top of that, the sheriff asked for another $963,809 from county reserves to buy equipment, the letter said.
In exchange, Flowers told commissioners, he would drop a lawsuit he’s filed against the county and would withdraw his appeal of his budget to Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Flowers and the county have been deadlocked for nearly seven months over his 2025-2026 budget request. He initially asked for $91.1 million, but the County Commission cut his allocation to $85.8 million, a $6.9 million increase over 2024-2025 but still more than $5 million less than what Flowers wanted.
He’s appealed to the state, asking DeSantis to override county commissioners and approve his original budget request.
“I’m really tired of talking about the budget. I’m tired of having this conversation,” Flowers told commissioners Nov. 18. “This is an opportunity for us to end it today. I’d really love to be able to move forward and get on to doing what we need to do.”
The commission instead agreed to give Flowers just the $495,000 for purchases, but it rejected Commissioner Laura Moss’ suggestion to give Flowers the unspent $1.4 million in the interest of getting along.
“We’ve always worked together with constitutional officers in the best interest of the county,” Moss said. “I’m proposing, in the best interest of the county, we return to the sheriff simply what he returned to us.”
In the end, though, there still seemed little ground for compromise.
Would he drop the lawsuit if he got his $1.4 million back, Commissioner Susan Adams asked.
“That,” Flowers responded, “doesn’t get us where we need to be for budget purposes.” Flowers responded.
Colleen Wixon is the Indian River County government watchdog reporter for TCPalm and Treasure Coast Newspapers.
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Sheriff, Indian River commissioners find little room for compromise in budget standoff
Reporting by Colleen Wixon, Treasure Coast Newspapers / Treasure Coast Newspapers
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