Commission rejects Holly Davis' demand to triple travel perks

By John Labriola - The Citrus County Commission last week rejected liberal Commissioner Holly Davis'  proposal to more than triple commissioners' travel perks. 

Davis pushed for bumping each commissioner's travel allowance from $3,200 to $10,000 at last Wednesday's preliminary hearing on the county's 2023-24 budget, which will get two more hearings before it is approved in September.

Commissioner Diana Finegan objected to Davis' gold-plated travel plan for commissioners at a time when county departments are being held to a 3 percent increase.

"I just think this is an exorbitant amount when we're asking everyone else to trim their budgets," Finegan said, noting that Davis' plan would even have had taxpayers foot the bill for commissioners' trips to the Lecanto Government Building. 

"I never had a job where I got paid to drive to work," Finegan observed.

Commissioners Jeff Kinnard and Rebecca Bays agreed.

"$3,200 is enough," Kinnard said. "If we want to do more, the public pays us very well up here to do our jobs." 

Commissioners make more than $73,000 a year, well over the county's per capita income of $45,050. The job also comes with generous benefits, including including health, dental, vision, life insurance and membership in the coveted Florida Retirement System pension plan.

At one point in the discussion, a clearly irritated Davis made an incoherent argument for more taxpayer-funded perks by bringing up her father, who died in December. 

"My dad said something when I first filed for office: 'I wouldn't run for office unless I could pay for the whole campaign myself,'" she said, mocking her father's voice. "So I looked at him and said, 'Oh, so only wealthy people can run for office?'" (SEE VIDEO HERE.)

"It has nothing to do with the net worth of anyone," Kinnard replied. "It's staying within a budget."

It wasn't the first time Davis used her late father as a political punching bag. At an April meeting of the Tourism Development Council, she disparagingly cited his supposed discomfort with interracial couples as evidence of why Citrus County needs to push diversity harder in its tourism marketing. Davis is the daughter of Capt. Tom Davis, a lifelong avaitor who led the decades-long fight for improvements to the Crystal River Airport, which was renamed in his honor.

At last week's budget hearing, Davis also pushed for more than doubling commissioners' "training" budget from $740 to $1,500 per commissioner, to cover conference registration fees for the National Association of Counties, the Florida Association of Counties, and the Florida Chamber of Commerce. Commissioners settled on raising the annual training allowance to $1,000 per commissioner but voted 3-1 to reject Davis' demand for more travel money. 

Davis has far exceeded her allocation for travel and training in each of the last two years. In the 2021-22 fiscal year, she spent a whopping $5,466 on travel and $2,391 on attending conferences, according to county budget documents. As of April 30 of this fiscal year, Davis had already racked up more than $3,700 in travel expenses and $1,300 in conference registration fees.

Commissioners set a tentative millage rate of 8.9408 for 2023-24, up from the current 8.2458. The commission can lower the tax rate before approving the final budget in September but can't increase it, and commissioners last week instructed staff to "sharpen pencils" to bring down spending by then. One mill equals $1 for every $1,000 of a property's taxable value.