Johnson may see state inquiry over $2.3-million deficit

TAMPA — Florida's top election official said Tuesday that the state will investigate how Hillsborough's former supervisor of elections spent more than $2-million in federal grant money if ongoing audits don't come up with the answer.

Secretary of State Kurt Browning said he was surprised when Buddy Johnson's office told commissioners in December that the office had more than $2.3-million in cost overruns.

Browning said there should be no deficit, considering that Hillsborough received a federal grant meant to cover many of the costs associated with a new voting system.

"We keep hearing that he's short $2.3-million, and I wonder, 'What did he spend it on?' '' Browning said. "I don't understand."

Johnson was supposed to provide a full accounting of how he spent the $2.5-million grant by Dec. 31, but Browning said the form explaining the expenditures wasn't filled out completely. So Johnson's successor, Phyllis Busansky, has inherited the job of explaining how the money was spent.

Browning said he'll wait for audits already under way before he calls for a state inquiry. He said he'll also hold off until Busansky wraps up her own inquiries into the deficit.

"We're going to wait for the county to come up with a conclusion," Browning said. "But our concern is that the (federal grant) money was not spent correctly."

Law enforcement has not said whether it intends to launch a formal investigation into Johnson's conduct as supervisor, which has been depicted in a series of stories in the St. Petersburg Times.

Browning was in Tampa on Tuesday to discuss with members of the American Society for Public Administration how Florida's election offices fared in one of the busiest voting years in history. He gave a glowing report, saying 2008 set a new standard in how local election offices performed.

But he didn't mention Hillsborough, which in addition to cost overruns didn't finish tallying its ballots until a week after Election Day because of a series of technical glitches and mishaps.

"I didn't want to throw Buddy under the bus," Browning said, explaining the omission.

But Browning very much had Johnson on his mind Tuesday. In the audience was Hillsborough County Administrator Pat Bean. After Browning spoke, Bean gave him a county audit to help him understand the situation. The audit was released last week and helped nix Johnson's request for a $2.3-million county bailout.

"We think there was enough money from the state (which distributed the federal grants) and the county that it should have covered all of the costs," Bean said. "I was shocked that (Johnson) had to ask for as much as he did last month."

Johnson's request for the additional money, made a month after the election, came during a year in which Johnson claimed he was saving money. His $6.7-million budget request was the lowest in years.

In May, in the middle of a re-election campaign that he eventually lost to Busansky, Johnson issued a release that touted his thrifty ways.

"Families are being forced to re-examine their personal budgets in these tough economic times, and the elections office should do the same," Johnson said in the release.

But even as Johnson was making his claim, his chief of staff, Kathy Harris, was asking for an additional $1.5-million to sock away in an obscure contingency fund, according to Bean and county budget director Eric Johnson.

When Harris was told she needed to make a formal request — which meant commissioners needed to approve it — she dropped the matter, Eric Johnson said.

In an interview last month, Buddy Johnson told the Times that it was county officials who told him to come back later and ask for the money.

"They said, 'Come back and tell us what you spent,' " he said.

But county officials say it was the failure of Buddy Johnson's office to keep the county informed that frayed relations.

"The issue that is obvious is that the challenges the supervisor's office were facing weren't being communicated," said Eric Johnson. "That makes one suspicious."

Times staff writers Jeff Testerman and Bill Varian contributed to this report. Michael Van Sickler can be reached at (813) 226-3402 or mvansickler@sptimes.com.