Orange tax collector race features charges of ‘pay to play’ and a ‘vendetta’

For the past two elections, Orange County Tax Collector Scott Randolph has mostly escaped the political fray, running an office that has drawn little attention from rivals.

But this year is different. Randolph, a former state lawmaker, is fending off allegations from a primary challenger that he is rewarding his top donors with “pay-to-play” deals.

And Randolph says his opponent David Nelson Freeman is running because of a “vendetta” against the tax collector’s office that wouldn’t take his side in a heated property dispute with a telecommunications company — one that had Freeman blocking access to company equipment with metal stakes and chains and threatening 911 emergency services for thousands of people.

It’s a down-ballot contest that will have big implications for an office that handles $3.4 billion in tax and motor vehicle revenues and issues license plates and decals to hundreds of thousands of people.

The winner of the Aug. 20 Democratic primary will be nearly guaranteed victory in the November general election with no Republican and only a write-in candidate in the race.

Randolph, first elected in 2012, said he’s streamlined operations and improved customer service. He ran unopposed in 2016 and 2020 for the tax collector job that comes with an annual salary of $205,000.

“We have a very strong appointment system now to where 78% of our customers are seen in less than 15 minutes,” Randolph said. “I don’t think you find that in any big county anywhere in the country.”

He said he’s also proud of a taxpayer advocate office he created to help people and businesses that fall behind on taxes.

Freeman, a Windermere resident who owns an energy drink company, said he thinks services could be improved. He wants to add more seating for customers coming to the office and create a program to issue community identification cards for children and others without ID.

“The main focus I would have for the next four years is to make the DMV a better place where you don’t have to fear going,” he said.

Freeman’s campaign website is devoted to criticizing Randolph for taking tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from two private company executives who do business with the Orange County tax collector’s office.

The issue centers on the system Florida has set up to process car title and registration applications. In Orange County, the public can submit paperwork at the tax collector’s government offices, or they can elect to use one of three private tag agencies authorized by the tax collector to handle the work for an extra fee. These private offices are open on evenings and weekends and also work with car dealerships.

For the upcoming election, various companies and associates tied to executives Andrew Bell and Jason Strochak have donated a combined $30,000 to Randolph’s campaign, making up about 44% of his outside contributions, according to an Orlando Sentinel analysis of campaign finance records.

Strochak’s company First Apopka Tag Agency and Bell’s OATA and OATA Winter Park are Orange County’s three private tag agencies.

Those groups tied to the two men, along with business and personal associates, also contributed thousands of dollars in the 2016 and 2020 elections, when Randolph was unopposed, campaign records show.

Before starting his own company, Bell worked as a strategic project manager in the Orange tax collector’s office from 2012 until 2015 under Randolph’s leadership, according to his LinkedIn page.

Freeman called the arrangements “pay to play” with Randolph’s top campaign donors scoring lucrative deals with his office.

“Anyone with a quarter brain can see that there is favoritism there,” he said.

Randolph defended the deals, saying the office solicited proposals and competitive bids for the work.

“These are the options out there,” Randolph said of the companies selected. “These are just the guys in the business. … I don’t take his accusation seriously. It’s no more than judges are always raising money from lawyers, etc., etc. That’s the nature of politics. That’s what it is. There is no wrongdoing or even a whiff of wrongdoing.”

The companies have saved taxpayer dollars because the services they provide were money-losing ones for the tax collector’s office, Randolph said. State law allows the private companies to charge more for those same services, he said.

Randolph questions Freeman’s fitness for office, saying his challenger is running because of a “personal vendetta” that stemmed from a land dispute he had with the telecommunications and media giant Comcast Corp.

In a 2022 civil lawsuit, Comcast accused Freeman of blocking access to equipment used to provide internet and “critical E911 services” to over 11,000 customers in the Orlando area.

Freeman maintained Comcast was trespassing on a 150-foot-wide strip of land he had acquired through a tax deed sale, a public auction where property is sold to the highest bidder to recover delinquent taxes.

The property included a maintenance road and a drainage canal, and Comcast’s lawyers said when Freeman bought it he should have known it was a “drainage easement” to which he did not have “exclusive rights,” according to the lawsuit.

Although Freeman paid $1,700 for the land, he offered to sell the property to Comcast for $2.5 million, the suit stated. After Comcast refused, he threatened to have the company’s technicians arrested for trespassing, the company’s lawyers wrote.

When a homeowner’s association created an alternative path to Comcast’s station, Freeman placed metal stakes, chains and other obstacles along the route, according to the lawsuit. Comcast’s lawyers accused Freeman of causing a loss of service by damaging he company’s cables, which required “significant costs to address.”

Freeman also raised his shirt and displayed a handgun to a landscaper, the president of a nearby homeowner’s association alleged in an affidavit filed in the case. Freeman then approached her and acted in a “very aggressive manner,” she said in the affidavit.

Randolph said his opponent jumped into the race because he wanted the tax collector’s office to defend his “invalid tax deed” in the lawsuit.

“That’s what this whole thing is about,” he said. “It is a personal vendetta because I wouldn’t make him a multimillionaire so that he could extort Comcast and this poor middle-class neighborhood.”

Freeman denied displaying a handgun and said his dispute was with Comcast — not with Randolph.

Ultimately, Freeman’s tax deed was declared “void and invalid” in part because proper notice of the sale wasn’t given, court records show. The tax collector was instructed to refund Freeman the $1,700.

Randolph, 50, an attorney, served as a state representative for Orlando from 2006 and 2012. He stepped into the tax collector position in 2012 when Earl K. Wood died at 96 after nearly five decades of service in the office.

It was too late to remove Wood’s name from the ballot, and Randolph was picked by his party to get those votes and fill the post. Randolph was chairman of the Orange County Democratic Party at the time.

Freeman, 59, lists no biographical information on his campaign website, but he said his background includes managing an auto racing team. He has collected $25 in campaign donations.

In 2022, he made an unsuccessful bid for Florida governor.