Florida agency sues Tampa Bay area police charity over $75 fee

A local police charity didn't know it was breaking the law until it was served with a lawsuit two weeks ago, its executive director said.

A former bookkeeper apparently ignored calls from the state reminding the charity to renew its registration as well as a notice warning the charity about potential litigation, said Sun Coast Law Enforcement Charities executive director Michael Krohn.

Charities that seek donations in Florida must register with the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services each year. And state officials thought the charity was flouting its responsibility to renew its registration, which expired almost a year ago.

Krohn didn't know about any of that until the charity's president was served with the suit, which asked the court to impose a $10,000 civil penalty and to prohibit the charity from seeking donations until it complied with the law.

"What was going to be a $75 registration fee turned out to be nightmare," Krohn said.

Krohn then asked a worker to search the office of a bookkeeper, who was fired for unrelated problems before Christmas, he said. The worker found a final warning from the state in a folder in the bookkeeper's desk drawer, said Krohn, who is also executive director of the Sun Coast Police Benevolent Association, which runs the charity.

"We had an employee that was hiding this stuff," Krohn said.

Krohn contacted the state to settle the issue, and it was receptive.

The charity had a "history of doing everything right," said Liz Compton, a spokeswoman for the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

Sun Coast Law Enforcement Charities had been registered since 2000 and had kept up its renewals until last year, she said.

To resolve the matter, the state agreed to fine the charity $1,000, and the charity has paid, Compton said.

The department is reviewing the charity's paperwork and Compton anticipated that the suit will be dropped.

The matter could have devastated the charity, which had total revenue of about $11,000 in 2008, according to the annual report the tax-exempt organization filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Sun Coast Law Enforcement Charities benefits police officers and their families in Pinellas, Hernando, Citrus and Sumter counties.

Last year, among others, the charity helped the families of two St. Petersburg undercover officers who were shot and a Hernando sheriff's captain who was killed in a car crash.

The charity received a $26,000 donation from radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge Clem's foundation to benefit those families.

In a side note, the state says Clem's foundation isn't registered with the department, either.

Clem's agent, Thomas Bean, said the charity intends to register. The process has just taken time because The Bubba the Love Sponge Foundation just kicked into gear last year.

Another local nonprofit, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which owns the St. Petersburg Times, recently learned it needed to register, too. The school for journalists began soliciting for donations about four years ago, said Karen B. Dunlap, the Poynter Institute's president. But the school didn't know it was required to register until a meeting last June, when its development director was informed of the requirement, she said.

"As soon as we learned, we moved on it," she said.

Compton said the department generally informs charities about the law and tries to get them to comply with it.

"Our point is not to get people in trouble because they were ignorant of the law," Compton said.

Lorri Helfand can be reached at lorri@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4155.