JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The video attached to this story is from a previous report.
A city council meeting Monday at noon will decide if an election for a new Jacksonville sheriff will be held in August.
Because there are more than two candidates filing to run, if none of the candidates receive more than 50% of the vote, there will be a runoff to decide who the new sheriff will be.
Voters will already be headed to the polls August 23 for local and statewide elections including the gubernatorial primaries. A race for sheriff could be added to that ballot.
If city council votes 'yes' on an August election and that race results in a runoff, the runoff will then be on election day on November 8.
Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams announced his retirement, effective June 10, last week.
The decision came after Williams told reporters he had moved to Nassau County over a year ago and planned to live there for the foreseeable future.
The city charter, which essentially is Jacksonville's constitution, says the sheriff "shall reside in Duval County," and says if he moves out of the county, his seat becomes vacant.
Williams argued he was protected because in 2010, the Florida Legislature repealed a law requiring sheriffs to live in the county they serve. Charter experts said state law did not override the local charter's residency requirements. However, the city of Jacksonville's general counsel disagreed, saying that the city charter supersedes state law.
In a draft opinion Thursday, a draft legal opinion by the OGC says that Williams' move out of Duval County vacated the position for sheriff.
However, the draft opinion seemed to imply that the seat was not officially 'vacated' until the opinion was requested on Thursday, June 2.
This makes it unclear whether or not the sheriff's actions between his move in March 2021 and June 2 are valid, or if he should be compensated for that time.
"It was effective the moment he removed his residency from Duval County," says Jacksonville constitutional lawyer Bryan Gowdy. "So there's a lot of what I would call 'collateral consequences' of that, which would be that the sheriff was not entitled to compensation for the year that he had removed himself from Duval County. There could also be all types of challenges to any any orders issued by the sheriff under his authority as sheriff, on the grounds that he wasn't really the sheriff. So it just opens a can of worms."
Discussion of all of these issues is expected at Monday's meeting.
The full legal opinion draft can be read here.