BY DAN HILDEBRAN
With an annual salary of $37,000, Clay County Commissioners are among the lowest paid in the state, ranking them 56 out of 67 counties, even though Clay County’s population is in Florida’s top half.
The reason is that Clay is one of Florida’s 20 charter counties with salaries of commissioners set by the charter instead of the state.
Each year, the Florida Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research recalculates the salaries of most county and state officials based mainly on population. The 2024 report, issued last month, prescribed salaries for Bradford commissioners at $40,183 and Union commissioners at $35,540.
The new computations give Union commissioners a monthly paycheck of only $163 less than those in Clay, even though Clay’s population is more than 14 times that of its western neighbor.
If Clay were not a charter county and the state-regulated the board’s pay, each commissioner would earn $93,334 instead of $37,000.
The legislative office also gave Bradford and Union commissioners salary increases of around three-and-a-half percent beginning on October 1.
However, Clay commissioners do not get cost-of-living increases.
In 2022, Clay County voters were asked to approve cost-of-living adjustments to county commissioners’ pay. The charter amendment garnered only 38% of the vote, failing by nearly 35,000 votes.
The legislative office dictates the pay of Clay County’s remaining officers. However, the county’s constitutional officers, like the sheriff and tax collector, are term-limited by the charter, and an attempt to remove those term limits failed in 2022 by a margin of 79% to 21%.
Other county salaries
Other 2024-2025 county salaries mandated by the Office of Economic and Demographic Research are:
Clerk of Circuit Court, Property Appraiser, and Supervisor of Elections Clay: $168,693, Bradford: $128,770, Union: $123,895;
Tax Collector, Clay: $196,200, Bradford: $156,277, Union: $151,402;
Sheriff, Clay: $235,260, Bradford: $195,336, Union: $190,462;
Schools Superintendent, Clay: $196,200, Bradford: $156,277, Union: $151,402;
School Board, Clay: $46,554, Bradford: $34,082, Union: $32,793.
One county office not dictated by population is the county judge, meaning that the county judges in Clay, Bradford, and Union earn the same $186,034 a year as their counterparts in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties. All circuit judges earn $196,898, judges on district courts of appeal earn $218,939, and Supreme Court Justices earn $258,957.
Population
A significant component of salary determinations in the legislative office’s report is based on county populations.
According to estimates by the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research, six counties have populations greater than one million: Broward, Duval, Hillsborough, Miami-Dade, Orange, and Palm Beach. Six more have populations of 500,000 to one million: Brevard, Lee, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, and Volusia. Nineteen counties, including Clay and Alachua, have 200,000 to 500,000 residents. Seven have populations between 100,000 and 200,000, and 12, including Putnam, Columbia, and Suwannee, have 30,000 to 100,000 residents. That leaves 17 counties with under 30,000 people, including Union, Bradford, and Baker. Union County, the state’s least populated county for decades, now outpaces Liberty, Lafayette, Jefferson, Hamilton, Glades, Franklin, and Calhoun in number of residents.
Charter counties
Twenty Florida counties, in which more than 75% of the state’s population resides, are charter counties. Those include Alachua, Clay, Columbia, and Duval. Wakulla is the only charter county in the state with a population under 50,000.
Charters act like a federal or state constitution, serving as a governing document for a jurisdiction.
Most county charters dictate the terms of county commissioners’ service, including their terms of office, whether officials are term-limited, their compensation, whether they can be recalled, and whether they are elected at-large or in single-member districts.
Clay is the only charter county in which commissioners’ pay may only be changed by charter.
Charters also outline the selection and roles of county executives. The county executives in Duval, Miami-Dade, and Orange are elected, and the rest are appointed.
Charters may also govern the role of other county officers like the sheriff and school board members.
Duval’s charter dictates that school board members are limited to two terms and that the city council sets their salaries.
Leon and Lee made the supervisor of elections office a non-partisan post.
In 1964, Miami-Dade’s charter eliminated the sheriff and made the county mayor the county’s chief law enforcement officer. However, after a lawsuit by the Florida Sheriff’s Association, which claimed that the move violated the state’s constitution, Miami-Dade voters elected their first sheriff in 60 years this year.
