Two Warrington nonprofits sued Escambia County Clerk of Court Pam Childers on Friday after she refused to release $7,000 in discretionary funds the Board of County Commissioners had voted to pay, setting up a constitutional confrontation over who controls how county money gets spent.
Greater Pensacola Junior Golf Association, doing business as First Tee Gulf Coast, and the Warrington Emergency Aid Center filed the complaint in the Circuit Court of the First Judicial Circuit at 12:26 p.m. The lawsuit, filing number 246771410, names Childers in her capacity as Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller and seeks a writ of mandamus compelling payment, declaratory relief, and personal liability under Florida Statute § 129.09.
Attorney Alex Andrade of Moore, Hill & Westmoreland, who also serves as a state representative, sent Childers a demand letter April 14 giving her until Friday to release the money or face suit. She did not respond.
The Commission voted to direct $4,500 to First Tee Gulf Coast at three separate meetings, Feb. 6, March 6 and March 25, 2025, to fund scholarships for at-risk youth to attend golf programming. It approved $2,500 to the Warrington Emergency Aid Center at its Oct. 16, 2025 meeting to reimburse food-pantry expenses. Both organizations submitted required application forms documenting the public purpose of the funds before the Commission voted.
Childers denied both payments. In a March 9, 2026, email to Commissioner Mike Kohler, she wrote that the spending amounted to the county gifting tax revenue to private organizations for purposes unconnected to county programs. She had raised similar concerns at an April 3, 2025, Commission meeting, where she announced she was pausing all discretionary fund payments pending her own review. A memo she sent the Commission that same month stated: the payment will be denied if she does not agree that the mission of county government is being served.
The complaint argues that Childers has no legal authority to make that call. Under Florida Statute § 125.17, the clerk serves as accountant for the Board of County Commissioners, performing a ministerial function rather than a discretionary one. Florida courts have held for more than a century that a clerk may only refuse to sign a warrant when a payment exceeds what the law allows, constitutes an illegal charge, or lacks authorization, conditions the complaint argues do not apply here. The Commission has clear statutory authority under § 125.01 to fund recreational and health-and-welfare programs, and the organizations involved are IRS-designated 501(c)3 public charities.
The suit carries a sharp legal threat for Childers beyond the $7,000 at stake. The same Florida Statute § 129.09 she cites to justify denying payments also imposes strict civil liability on any clerk who signs warrants for unlawful payments. If her constitutional theory is correct, that funding youth golf and a food pantry is an unlawful use of public dollars, then every similar payment she approved from 2016 through 2024 was equally unlawful, and she personally owes the county every dollar. The complaint notes she approved more than $1.5 million in comparable payments over that period, and identifies more than $25,250 in specific payments her own 2025 review flagged as potentially improper.
Marty Stanovich, president and chief executive of First Tee Gulf Coast, said Childers had approved his organization's requests each year from 2021 through 2024 through the same process. Janet Plume, president of the Warrington Emergency Aid Center, said the pantry now serves twice as many households as it did at this time last year. A circuit court judge will decide whether the clerk's authority extends to overriding a unanimous commission vote, or whether a decade of accepted practice is now unlawful by the Clerk's own standard.