Urged by Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings to trim his budget as best he could, Sheriff John Mina hacked his initial funding appeal to run the region’s biggest law enforcement agency next year by $38 million, though he promised county commissioners he’ll likely revisit them in January to ask for more.
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His revised budget is $470 million, about $47 million more than last year, but far less than the $508 million he originally submitted in May.
He had wanted to hire 140 new deputies, but settled for two, both behavioral response deputies to handle mental health-related calls.
“We know [Florida] Amendment 3 is out there and upon us,” Mina told county commissioners during budget hearings Wednesday, referring to the statewide ballot measure that would increase the homestead tax exemption on a homeowner’s primary residence and figures to cost the county an estimated $165 million annually.
Mina’s Wednesday interaction with Orange County Commissioners is another prominent example of how the November ballot measure is already impacting local government services, as agencies worry both about the wisdom of relying on tax revenues that may disappear and the appearance of increasing spending amid a statewide political debate over whether cities and counties are wasting money.
Already this week, Orlando has instituted a freeze on new hiring. And Wednesday night, the Apopka city commission could not muster the votes to set a higher ceiling for its property tax rate, even though it would take a second, separate vote to actually hike taxes.
At the Orange County meeting Wednesday, Demings, sheriff from 2009 until he became mayor in 2018, said commissioners “appreciate the sheriff being sensitive to where we are.”
He said $470 million “after looking at the current landscape” is what Mina has determined he has to have.
The mayor pointed out crime is down. “They’ve done a good job,” he said. “It’s indisputable.”
He said the county logged nearly 42,000 jail bookings in 2025, up from about 35,000 in 2024, but 20,000 fewer than a decade ago.
“I think there are good reasons why those bookings have gone down,” Demings said. “There’s some good law enforcement in there, yes, but I don’t want us to ever lose sight of what we spend on the prevention side, fixing broken people, stopping people from becoming broken, and all those children’s programs that we have funded.”
The proposed 2026-27 county budget is $8.9 billion overall, up from $8.3 billion adopted by the board last year.
The board has heard budget requests this week for Public Works, Health Service and other county departments and other constitutional officers, too.
The sheriff’s budget is typically the biggest.
Florida economists project cities and counties to lose $12 billion under property tax plan
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Mina said he didn’t envy commissioners facing other tough funding choices which likely will get even tougher if the tax measure passes.
“But I can’t say, ‘No, we’re not going to respond to your home.’ Can’t do it, won’t do it,” he said.
He opened his presentation with a video montage of body-worn camera footage showing deputies in action — saving a baby from a third-floor apartment fire, reviving an unconscious toddler, rescuing a 9-year-old from a lake, pulling a crash survivor from a burning car and leading flood victims through high water.
“We’re busy, very busy,” he said, noting his department on average answers 41 calls an hour, 982 a day and more than 29,000 a month. “I have no doubt —as our population continues to increase and our visitor numbers increase, the number of calls for service will continue to increase as well.”
Mina said his proposed budget would cover rising health insurance costs and salary increases, including a negotiated pay bump for the Fraternal Order of Police bargaining unit employees. Overall, the sheriff’s budget puts personnel expenses at $364 million, including costs for providing court security.
The Sheriff’s Office employs 1,939 sworn deputies and 814 civilians.
Some citizens questioned the sheriff’s budget, concerned money for more critical needs would be used to enforce federal immigration policy.
“Can you guarantee that no portion of this budget increase, whether for personal equipment, training, technology, detention, transportation, or administrative costs, will be used directly or indirectly to support federal-funded immigration enforcement activities,” asked Linda Coffin, a member of the League of Women Voters and an outspoken critic of ICE. “We do not want any of our taxpayer money to be used for federally funded immigration operations.”
Mina said his department follows state law which requires it to use its “best efforts” to assist in immigration enforcement.
“But I will also say that the enforcement of immigration is not our top priority,” he said.
Of 15,000 arrests by deputies last year, “we only made 101 arrests related to immigration and those people also had local charges,” Mina said.
The jail was holding eight inmates Wednesday solely on an immigration detainer, but 184 other inmates on local charges and an ICE detainer.
Mina said his deputies don’t go on ICE raids or initiate immigration enforcement.
“ICE has called us to assist with protests on their property and we have assisted them. They asked for us to assist with crowd control training, which they desperately need, as you can see throughout the country, and we are experts at it, so we have assisted them,” Mina said. “They just don’t call us that much.”
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