Pasco clerk of court gets partial win in budget dispute with county
Pasco County Clerk of the Circuit Court Nikki Alvarez-Sowles secured a partial victory in a lawsuit that claimed the county has failed to pay its proper share of her office’s operating costs for years.
Alvarez-Sowles sued the county in 2021 claiming that her office was underfunded by the county for maintaining technology that tracks criminal justice records and for operating a satellite courthouse in New Port Richey.
The Second District Court of Appeal ruled this week that the county was responsible for costs of the court’s information technology system, but not for operations of the satellite courthouse.
The lawsuit argued that counties are required to pay for the cost of communications services, including radio systems and existing multiagency justice information systems. That included the cost of salaries and other expenses of the state court system to meet the local requirements of the law.
The county was only paying for a portion of those costs, according to the lawsuit, with plans to phase in more support over time. But Alvarez-Sowles argued that her office was burdened with the added costs to keep the technology running.
For years, the county maintained the court information system but, in 2016, asked the clerk to retire it and switch to a modern program. The clerk agreed to take it on.
“The consequence of being a good partner was that the Clerk began bearing the cost” of the system beginning in January 2017, according to the lawsuit.
Alvarez-Sowles also argued that the county is responsible for maintaining a fully functioning courthouse in the county seat. She said that running a second judicial center in New Port Richey is the county’s choice and, therefore, the county’s financial responsibility.
Between the two disputes, she claimed over the last several budget years that Pasco County owed her office several million dollars for services she provided. In the first year alone, she asked for $9 million more than the county offered.
The dispute rattled some who worked within the judicial world, in one case prompting a plea for cooperation between the clerk’s office and the county from James Mallo, who was both a leader in the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office and then head of the Pasco County Republican Executive Committee.
Last year, the circuit court ruled against Alvarez-Sowles in both of her arguments and she immediately appealed that ruling.
“In today’s opinion, the Appellate Court ruled the County is responsible for fully and immediately funding the multiagency criminal justice information system. However, it further ruled the County did not have a responsibility to provide Clerk’s Office funding for the operating expenses of the West Pasco Judicial Center,” the clerk’s office announced in a news release this week.
“Alvarez-Sowles looks forward to working with the Board of County Commissioners to amicably resolve the remaining issues involving this litigation,” the release said.
County officials did not reply immediately to a request for reaction to the ruling.
