Investigation: Palm Beach County sheriff lavishes retiring execs with $400K bonuses

When Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputies retire, they usually can count on leaving with generous lifetime pensions, along with payouts for unused vacation and sick leave.

But the agency’s top executives leave with something else, too: massive retirement perks worth more than five times a deputy’s annual starting salary.

Sheriff Ric Bradshaw has doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra retirement payments to his top brass as they departed in recent years, an extraordinary benefit with no apparent parallels in other county government agencies, a Palm Beach Post investigation has found.

Bradshaw implemented the retirement benefits as early as 2014, records show, and in the following seven years he paid out bonuses of more than $400,000 each to at least three departing officials, including one payout of more than $700,000.

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Florida law generally bans government bonuses to groups of employees

In 2021, he revised the bonus program to give executives hundreds of hours of extra paid time off instead of money — time off that could be cashed out for hundreds of thousands of dollars when they depart the agency.

This year, his former chief deputy, Frank DeMario, took advantage of that program for a huge payday. In addition to cashing out his regular sick leave and vacation time, he walked out the door with an extra $412,000 for unused extra time off.

The executive benefit continues despite a state law that generally prohibits government agencies in Florida from giving bonuses to exclusive groups of employees.

Public agencies in Florida that want to implement bonus programs must “base the award of a bonus on work performance” and “consider all employees for the bonus,” according to Florida law. Bradshaw’s program does neither.

In all, The Post found four cases of sheriff’s office executives who left with large retirement payouts, totaling just under $2 million. At least 10 other executives are currently amassing paid leave hours that they can cash out upon leaving the agency.

PBSO's office budget continues to grow

The revelation of the bonuses comes amid increased attention to the sheriff’s office’s expanding budget, which grew by more than 6% this year to $877 million.

The 4,500-employee agency has drawn notice for paying the highest salaries of any sheriff’s office in Florida, and county administrators have long warned that PBSO’s ballooning expenses are crowding out other county government priorities.

PBSO’s spending has also become an issue in Bradshaw’s bid for a sixth term in office. He faces a challenge in November from his former chief deputy, Michael Gauger, who has made Bradshaw’s financial management a platform of his campaign.

Ironically, though, it’s Gauger who has benefited the most from Bradshaw’s payouts to executives.

Gauger left the agency in 2021 after a falling out with Bradshaw. When he left, he received a retirement bonus worth $743,000, enough to pay the annual salaries of 10 first-year deputies, payroll records show.

That payout was in addition to more than $110,000 Gauger received for unused sick leave and vacation time.

'This has to be a mistake,' former PBSO's chief deputy Gauger says

In an interview, Gauger recalled being shocked by the amount he received as he departed. He said he placed an incredulous phone call to PBSO’s chief operating officer, George Forman, who assured him the amount was correct.

“I said, 'George, this has to be a mistake. It can’t be that much,’" he recalled. “It’s hard to believe.”

Gauger called the bonuses excessive.

“I think it’s too much,” he said, acknowledging that "of course, I benefited.”

In a statement, sheriff’s office spokesperson Teri Barbera defended the executive benefits as a tool for retaining seasoned law enforcement officials.

“In order for the agency to continue to employ highly qualified and long-term senior staff members, salaries and retirement benefits must be competitive,” she wrote. “The retirement benefits are a result of a lifetime of service and have been reviewed by our legal department who are confident we are in compliance with all state and federal laws.”

The executive staff perk was originally set up as a straightforward retirement bonus. Agency contracts show that departing executives were guaranteed a “senior executive staff longevity benefit” based on their years of service to PBSO.

For deputies with at least 20 years at the agency, the bonus would amount to 2¾ weeks of pay for every year served. In the case of Gauger, who logged 50 years with the agency during two stints, that was more than 2½ years of extra pay.

But it wasn’t just a windfall for PBSO’s longtime second-in-command. Also earning large retirement payouts were James Davis, the agency’s former director of administrative services, who left in 2015 with a $406,000 bonus; and Joseph Bradshaw, PBSO’s former director of legal affairs, who received a $407,000 bonus in 2016. (Joseph Bradshaw is not related to the sheriff).

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Huge amounts of paid leave granted — five months of pay

In 2021 Bradshaw revamped the executive incentives, doing away with direct retirement bonuses and instead giving his executive staff massive blocks of bankable paid time off.

Members of the senior executive staff receive regular sick leave and vacation time like other employees. But when they join the executive staff they also receive a one-time lump sum of 850 hours of paid leave — worth approximately five months of pay.

And each year they serve on the executive team they receive an additional block of paid administrative leave time on top of that.

Over time, according to PBSO records, an executive could rack up thousands of hours of leave worth more than three years’ pay.

The Post found one executive, so far, who has cashed in on the new policy: DeMario, who retired in March.

As he retired, DeMario cashed in 2,750 hours of “service accrual hours” worth $412,000, records show. That was in addition to $205,000 of unused sick leave and vacation time.

At least 10 other sheriff’s executives are building up large banks of paid leave through Bradshaw’s new incentive for top executives, records show. The program applies to law enforcement employees with a rank of colonel or higher and civilian employees who are considered department directors.

It’s not clear why Bradshaw shifted from direct bonuses to large blocks of paid leave. He did not respond to an interview request, and a sheriff’s office spokeswoman declined to explain the change.

But the shift, in 2021, came just months after the South Florida Water Management District was scolded by the state inspector general for giving bonuses to employees without putting in place work-performance requirements.

Another bonus program at PBSO

The following year, The Post exposed a separate bonus program at PBSO, one that has given bonuses to all employees for at least three years but reserved the largest for the agency’s highest-paid officials.

Through that program, top executives received bonuses of $15,000 or more in 2020, along with bonuses in 2019 and 2021. Those bonuses came in addition to annual raises.

Evaluating whether granting large blocks of paid leave time violates state law is tricky because of the way PBSO's program is set up, said Christian Waugh, a lawyer who works as a town attorney for three municipalities in Nassau and Volusia counties.

While the arrangement is unusual, he said granting leave time that can be cashed in “probably is kind of a bonus,” although it would be up to courts to determine whether such an arrangement meets the standards required by state law.

“It sounds like a bonus, and it quacks like a bonus,” he said, “and if it doesn’t have those standards, I’d be concerned.”

Bradshaw’s overall budget is approved by the county commission, but commissioners receive only a broad overview of his spending plans before granting his requests. Should they deny to grant his full budget request, he can appeal directly to the governor and the state Cabinet.

No bonuses for top brass in other sheriff's departments

It’s not clear whether other sheriff’s offices in Florida have similarly generous programs. Most Florida sheriffs are independently elected constitutional officers who make spending decisions with little oversight from other elected bodies.

But in Palm Beach’s neighboring counties to the north and south, sheriff’s offices say their executives enjoy no such perks.

Broward County’s sheriff grants his executive staff an extra 40 hours a year of administrative leave, but those hours must be used during the calendar year, agency spokesperson Carey Codd said. That means they cannot be cashed out at the end of their careers.

Martin County’s sheriff pays his executive staff 100% of their accrued sick leave when they depart, twice the compensation rate that veteran non-executive employees receive. But executives do not receive extra leave time, agency spokesperson Christine Weiss said.

Executives receive no extra benefits at another of the county’s constitutional offices, the county Property Appraiser’s office, an agency spokesperson said.

Regardless of the program’s legality, a government watchdog group called the bonuses “highly questionable.”

“It certainly seems excessive to me,” said Ben Wilcox, research director of Integrity Florida, a Tallahassee-based government accountability group. “I think the public will also agree that it appears that these executives are really profiting personally from their public service.”

Andrew Marra is a reporter at The Palm Beach Post. Reach him at amarra@pbpost.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: PBSO gives executives massive retirement perks, bonuses