Tallahassee's 2024 City Charter Amendments

The City of Tallahassee charter is the city's constitution, and only voters can change it. On November 5, 2024, they approved all five amendments the City Commission had placed at the end of the ballot, and according to WFSU not one of them fell below 55 percent. Taken together, the five changes raised commissioner pay to match the Leon County Commission, gave the Independent Ethics Board reach over commissioners when they sit on other boards, ended August runoffs between two candidates, set a charter review every 10 years and wrote the Inspector General into the charter.

The Tallahassee Democrat tallied the results this way: Question 1 on pay passed with nearly 56 percent, Question 2 on ethics jurisdiction with more than 72 percent, Question 3 on two-candidate elections with nearly 70 percent, Question 4 on periodic review with more than 80 percent, and Question 5 on the Inspector General with nearly 65 percent. WCTV read the uneven margins, from 56 to more than 80 percent, as a sign that Tallahassee voters weighed each question rather than checking all yes or all no, a decade after the citizen-led 2014 ethics amendment showed the same electorate could act on its own.

The review was overdue by the city's own standards. The Democrat reported in August 2023 that Leon County and other local governments review their charters every 10 years, while the city had not done one since 2009. The last two big charter changes came from different directions: in 1996 voters ended the rotating mayor system, in which commissioners took turns as mayor, and in 2014 a citizen petition, not the commission, created the Independent Ethics Board. That August the City Commission split 3-2 to stretch the staff timeline by two months, with Commissioners Jeremy Matlow, Jack Porter and Curtis Richardson pressing for more time.

In October 2023, WFSU reported, the City Commission formally moved ahead after 29 public surveys came back asking about the size of the commission, how it is elected and whether seats should be full-time jobs. Mayor John Dailey, Mayor Pro Tem Dianne Williams-Cox and Commissioner Curtis Richardson outvoted Matlow and Porter, who wanted wider surveys and ethics and mayoral proposals added. The ten members of the Charter Review Committee were appointed in December 2023 and met at Tallahassee City Hall on South Adams Street from January through March 2024.

The committee's choices narrowed the field. According to the Tallahassee Democrat account of its final March 2024 meeting, it voted to keep five commissioners rather than seven or more, dropped a move to single-member districts and dropped a proposal to put the police chief under the commission. All five Tallahassee commissioners are elected citywide, and the Democrat noted that districts would have opened a seat in the northeast around Killearn, where Republican voters are concentrated. The committee also voted 7-2 for a plan letting commissioners set their own pay after a citizen study, and voted 9-0 on two ethics items.

Question 1 was the closest vote and the one the commission did not take as the committee wrote it. Instead of a citizen study panel, the City Commission voted 3-2 to ask voters for a formula: city commissioners would earn the same annual salary that state law sets for the Leon County Board of County Commissioners. Dailey, Richardson and Williams-Cox voted to put it on the ballot; Porter and Matlow voted no. Under the old charter only the mayor was paid at the county rate, and WFSU reported in October 2024 that the other commissioners earned $49,500 against roughly $99,000 for the county board.

The Tallahassee Democrat put the Leon County commissioner salary at $99,167 a year for the 2025 fiscal year, a figure the state sets by population. WCTV reported that the raise of about $50,000 per city commissioner would take effect in October 2025. Supporters on the commission, including Williams-Cox, argued that a seat that has become a full-time job should not be limited to people who are wealthy or retired.

Question 2 settled a jurisdiction argument. The city attorney had taken the position that the Independent Ethics Board could only reach commissioners when they acted on city business. But Tallahassee commissioners also make decisions on other public boards. The CRA board is the mayor and the four commissioners, and it directs spending in the Greater Frenchtown/Southside and Downtown redevelopment districts. The Blueprint Intergovernmental Agency board is the City and County Commissions sitting as one body, overseeing sales tax projects such as the Airport Gateway across Lake Bradford Road toward Florida A&M University, FSU and Innovation Park. Since the 2024 vote, the charter says the ethics board's jurisdiction follows commissioners onto those boards.

Question 5 dealt with the city's internal watchdog. According to the Office of the Inspector General page on talgov.com, the City Commission created the Office of the City Auditor in 1979 and added an Inspector General by ordinance on July 8, 2020, but the charter's auditor language limited that office's independence. The amendment replaced the auditor with the Inspector General in the charter. The IG now serves five-year terms, and firing one takes a two-thirds vote of the commission, four of five, where three votes had been enough. Removal must be for cause, with a chance to answer it in public. The City Commission adopted Ordinance 25-O-04 on February 12, 2025, deleting old references to the City Auditor. When the IG question came before the commission in 2024 it passed 4-1, with Mayor Dailey the lone no vote.

Question 3 changed the calendar for City Commission races. Before 2024, a Tallahassee race with only two candidates was decided in the August primary, so the winner could be known months before most voters showed up in November. WFSU noted the last such race decided in August was the 2022 Seat 3 contest, which Matlow won with 55.8 percent. Now two-candidate city races are settled at the November general election, on the same Leon County ballot as state and federal contests.

Question 4 was the most popular of the five, at more than 80 percent, and it ends the long gaps. WFSU counted 14 years between the 2024 review and the one before it. The Democrat reported that the next Tallahassee charter review is set to begin in 2033. Waiting is not the only path: as WCTV noted, citizens can put an amendment on the ballot with signatures from 10 percent of city voters, the same route that created the Independent Ethics Board in 2014. As of October 9, 2026, the City Leadership page lists Mayor John E. Dailey, Commissioners Curtis Richardson, Jacqueline Jack Porter, Jeremy Matlow and Dianne Williams-Cox, and Inspector General Dennis R. Sutton. Last verified: October 9, 2026, on the City of Tallahassee website.