Daly v. Marion Cnty.

• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals
• Writing for the Court: B.L. Thomas, C.J.
• Citation: Daly v. Marion Cnty., 265 So.3d 644 (Fla. App. 2018)
• Decision Date: 27 November 2018
• Docket Number: No. 1D17-4509,1D17-4509
• Parties: Christina DALY, in Her Official Capacity as Secretary of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, Appellant, v. MARION COUNTY, Florida, Polk County, Florida, and Seminole County, Florida, Political SubDivisions of the State of Florida, Appellees.

265 So.3d 644

Christina DALY, in Her Official Capacity as Secretary of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, Appellant,

v.MARION COUNTY, Florida, Polk County, Florida, and Seminole County, Florida, Political SubDivisions of the State of Florida, Appellees.

No. 1D17-4509

District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.

November 27, 2018

Rehearing Denied February 15, 2019

Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Blaine H. Winship, Special Counsel, and William H. Stafford, III, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Appellants.

Gregory T. Stewart, Carly J. Schrader and Heath R. Stokley of Nabors, Giblin & Nickerson, P.A., Tallahassee, for Appellees Polk County and Seminole County.

Arthur Bryant Applegate, County Attorney, and Lynn P. Porter-Carlton, Deputy County Attorney, Sanford, for Appellee Seminole County.

B.L. Thomas, C.J.

Before us is the culmination of a series of cases regarding juvenile-detention funding under section 985.686, Florida Statutes. Appellant, Christina Daly, in her official capacity as Secretary of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, appeals the trial court's order granting final summary judgment to Appellees, Polk County and Seminole County,¹ and ordering the Department to pay refunds to Appellees for overpayments into the "Shared County/State Juvenile Detention Trust Fund." For the reasons set forth below, we affirm.

Background

Under section 985.686(1), Florida Statutes, "the state and the counties have a joint obligation" to fund juvenile detention care. During the fiscal years in question, the legislature divided this joint obligation according to disposition date, with each participating county having to pay the costs of detention care for any juvenile residing in that county "for the period of time prior to final court disposition." § 985.686(3), Fla. Stat.

At the beginning of each fiscal year, the Department was required to estimate each county's predisposition costs for the upcoming year and bill that county monthly based on that estimate.² § 985.686(5), Fla. Stat. At the end of the fiscal year, the Department was required to reconcile the monies paid by each county throughout the year with that county's actual costs. Id. Pursuant to its rules implementing this requirement, the Department assigned credits toward future payments when counties overpaid, and assigned debits when counties underpaid.

All funds provided by the counties were deposited into the Shared Trust Fund, which the legislature created as a "depository for funds to be used for the costs of juvenile detention." § 985.6015(2), Fla. Stat. The only monies deposited into this Shared Trust Fund were supplied by the counties to prepay their obligations, and general revenue funds to cover the costs of fiscally constrained counties.

The Department initially interpreted section 985.686 to require the counties to pay all detention costs incurred before the date of the juvenile's commitment to the Department, as opposed to the date of the court's disposition of the juvenile's case, which often occurs days before commitment. See Dep't of Juvenile Justice v. Okaloosa Cty. , 113 So.3d 1074 (Fla. 1st DCA 2013) (Mem). In 2010, several counties challenged the Department's rules codifying this interpretation, arguing that the rules forced the counties to pay for thousands of days that were the State's responsibility. Id. On appeal, this court agreed with the counties, holding that the plain meaning of section 985.686 did not support the Department's interpretation. Id.

The Department then issued a final order denying any obligation to repay the counties. Pinellas and Broward Counties, both of whom had overpaid on account of the Department's invalidated rules, appealed that final order, and we remanded for the Department to apply credits over time until the total credit was applied. Pinellas Cty. v. Florida Dep't of Juvenile Justice , 188 So.3d 894 (Fla. 1st DCA 2016) ; Broward Cty. v. State, Dep't of Juvenile Justice , 192 So.3d 70 (Fla. 1st DCA 2016) (Mem).

Unlike Pinellas and Broward Counties, who could be remedied with credits toward future prepayments, Appellees opted out of the cost-sharing system sometime after the years of overpayment, as permitted by section 985.686(10), Florida Statutes. The Department denied any obligation to issue refunds to these counties. In Marion County v. Department of Juvenile Justice , this Court held that the Department has a duty to reconcile differences between initial estimates and actual costs, and that honoring that obligation can require reimbursing counties for overpayments when credits are not an appropriate remedy. 215 So.3d 621, 628 (Fla. 1st DCA 2017).

In 2014, Polk County filed a refund application under section 215.26, Florida Statutes, the tax refund statute, which states:

(1) The Chief Financial Officer may refund to the person who paid same, or his or her heirs, personal representatives, or assigns, any moneys paid into the State Treasury which constitute:

(a) An overpayment of any tax, license, or account due;

(b) A payment where no tax, license, or account is due; and(c) Any payment made into the State Treasury in error;

and if any such payment has been credited to an appropriation, such appropriation shall at the time of making any such refund, be charged therewith. There are appropriated from the proper respective funds from time to time such sums as may be necessary for such refunds.

§ 215.26(1), Fla. Stat. (emphasis added). The Department denied Polk County's refund application, asserting that counties are not "persons" under section 215.26. Polk County then brought an action against the Department and its Chief Financial Officer, as permitted by Rule 69I-44.020(3)(b), Florida Administrative Code. Seminole County filed a similar application.

The Department asserted that it could not issue refunds, as the Shared Trust Fund consisted of subaccounts, and Appellees' subaccounts were empty. Appellees presented the deposition testimony of the Department's Chief of Staff, who testified as follows:

Q: Do you keep track of when expenditures are made from the shared trust fund, how much of the money deposited by Charlotte County goes toward individual expenditures?

A: No.

Q: So when bills are coming – when bills come into the department to be paid, how does the department determine which fund within the department those bills are paid out of?

A: It's paid out of general revenue and the shared county trust fund.

....

Q: And if a payment is issued from the shared county trust fund, that's not related to a particular county's revenue; is that correct?

A: No, no, no.

When asked if the Department kept documents showing county-specific accounts within the Shared Trust Fund, the Chief of Staff replied, "They're accounted against the shared county trust fund in total, not by county." He further testified:

Q: Does the department maintain any records that would allow it to determine what Charlotte County's balance is within the trust account on that particular date?

A: No.

Q: And that's, again, because the expenditures are not tracked against what Charlotte County pays into the trust fund; is that correct?

A: That's correct, that's correct.

The Chief of Staff also testified that when the Department issued refunds to counties in the past, it only assessed whether the Shared Trust Fund as a whole had sufficient cash for refunds.

The trial court concluded that the evidence "unequivocally demonstrates that the Department does not maintain subaccounts, and ... is unable to attribute funds remaining in the Shared Trust Fund to an individual county." The court also found that the Shared Trust Fund has held funds in excess of $15 million at the end of each recent fiscal year, and that the Department had issued refunds in the past under section 215.26, Florida Statutes. The court granted final summary judgment to Appellees and ordered the Department to issue refunds in the amounts overpaid.

Analysis

I. Judicial Authority to Order the Refund

A trial court's ruling on a motion for summary judgment posing a pure question of law is reviewed de novo . Major League Baseball v. Morsani , 790 So.2d 1071, 1074 (Fla. 2001).

Section 985.686, Florida Statutes, declares that "the state and the counties have a joint obligation ... to contribute to the financial support of the detention care provided for juveniles." § 985.686(1), Fla. Stat. The statute provides that "[a]ny difference between the estimated costs and actual costs shall be reconciled at the end of the state fiscal year." § 985.686(5), Fla. Stat. In Marion County , we held that this language requires "more than a reconciliation on paper." Marion Cty., 215 So.3d at 628. "The fact that the Department's rules only provide for a forwarding credit does not delete the statutory requirements that counties are only responsible for actual costs and the Department has a mandatory duty to reconcile overpayments." Id.

Although section 985.686 creates a statutory duty to remedy overpayments, it contains no appropriation language indicating a source of monies for refunds. See § 985.686(1), Fla. Stat.; see also § 216.011(1)(b), Fla. Stat. (defining an appropriation as "a legal authorization to make expenditures for specific purposes within the amounts authorized by law"); State ex rel. Victor Chem. Works v. Gay, 74 So.2d 560, 562 (Fla. 1954) ("unless there is some statute which authorizes a refund or the filing of a claim for refund, money cannot be refunded or recovered once it has been paid although levied under the authority of an unconstitutional statute"). Appellees must therefore rely on section 215.26, Florida Statutes, to obtain a refund for overpayments made into the State Treasury.

Appellant acknowledges that section 215.26 provides appropriations to pay refunds, and admits that the statute is a proper vehicle for tax overpayments, but argues that the statute affords no relief here, as the overpayments at issue were deposited into a trust fund. Appellant argues that the...