- May 20, 2026
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With a lawsuit still brewing between Sarasota County’s tax collector and Sarasota County Schools over a 2% fee to administer a voter-approved property tax, Sarasota County commissioners on Tuesday formally reaffirmed an earlier decision to pay that fee.
This time, though, the vote was unanimous.
And at the same time, commissioners Tuesday acknowledged the issue of which governmental body should pay the so-called commission — them or the school district — was a matter for the courts.
In front of them was a resolution that codified a previous, and unannounced, vote to undo an August 2025 agreement pushing responsibility for the 2% fee to the school district, breaking a two-decade long practice of the county paying the tab. That unanimous-undo vote in 2025 prompted Sarasota County Schools to sue Tax Collector Mike Moran’s office in April, calling into question the appropriateness of the fee in the first place and claiming that all the tax's collected revenue was intended for educational uses, not administrative ones.
“This is an attempt to find the easiest way to execute on the board’s direction,’’ County Administrator Jonathan Lewis said on Tuesday, referring to the board’s May 3 initial 3-2 vote, which was not publicly noticed on its agenda. Days after that vote, the Tax Collector’s office subsequently paid more than $2.1 million back to the school district with the understanding it would hold back the same amount from money it routinely passes on to the county.
Last week, Sarasota County Schools attorney Dan DeLeo said the repayment was a positive step, but a deeper question remained.
“I’m going to say to them (the school board) … you need to negotiate some clarity about how long the County Commission is going to pay (the commission) so we have certainty,'' he told the Observer. “Hopefully, we can all get together … Governments shouldn’t be suing each other. They should be working stuff out. And that’s our first plan, not to litigate.”
Also last week, the Tax Collector’s office filed three motions to dismiss the school district’s April lawsuit.
Among other challenges, the motion to dismiss claims: “The Constitution provides for a county public school system and for taxation for schools distinct from the county government and from taxation for county purposes; but this does not prevent the collection of school taxes by county officers; nor does it prohibit the payment to county officers of reasonable statutory fees for collecting district school taxes. The law does not make the expense of collecting district school taxes a county purpose so that the expense of collecting district school taxes may be paid from county funds....”
Additionally, a chart supplied to the County Commission by the Tax Collector’s office presented data on “what actually took place” vs. “what should have taken place.” In it, more than $12 million of fees is totaled across seven years on the school district’s side of the ledger under the heading of “what should have taken place.” Individual levies ranging from $2,196,000 (in fiscal year 2025) to $1.28 million (in fiscal 2019) were paid by the County Commission, a fact the Tax Collector’s office maintains should have been the school district's responsibility.
In urging restraint on further action until the lawsuit was concluded, Commissioner Teresa Mast cautioned against getting in the middle of legal action that didn’t involve the county directly.
“I don’t want to see us pay something that we should not be paying, and hopefully the courts will resolve this issue because there is a friction there, for whatever it’s worth, between the two entities,’’ she said.
As originally presented, Tuesday’s resolution included provisions to sunset the agreement for the county to pay the 2% commission in 2030, when the school district’s 1-mill property tax would next go to voters, along with opportunities to revisit the issue sooner. On Tuesday, County Commissioners agreed to make clear they were watching the outcome of the court case and could react to unwind the agreement accordingly if needed.
“Having a judge weigh in, having to see who’s paying for what, all those conversations will likely happen over the summer, but in the meantime, at this stage, this board has the ability to adopt a resolution to say at least for this week … we’re going to do something on this board that’s meaningful and then have an open discussion with our school board and our tax collector and this board about how we protect our kids, our teachers and the foundation of our academic curriculum and the journey our kids go through,’’ Commissioner Joe Neunder said.
