Tallahassee Independent Ethics Board

The Independent Ethics Board is a seven-member citizen panel that polices the ethics code for the City of Tallahassee from outside the City Commission's chain of command. The Ethics Board page on talgov.com describes it as a quasi-judicial board with subpoena power: it hears alleged violations of the city ethics code, investigates complaints and levies civil penalties, runs a citywide ethics hotline, trains city officials, employees and advisory board members, issues advisory opinions and recommends ordinances and charter amendments to the commission. It also hires and supervises its own staff, which is the point of the word independent in its name.

The board's reach is the city, not Leon County government. Its office takes written complaints addressed to the Ethics Officer at 300 South Adams Street, the City Hall address, and its meetings are posted on the same BoardDocs system that carries City Commission, Blueprint and CRA agendas. Dwight Floyd, a Florida A&M University graduate who spent 34 years with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, has served as Executive Director and Ethics Officer since February 2020.

The board exists because a citizen petition went around City Hall rather than through it. In 2013 the city already had an ethics advisory panel, which met close to 20 times, and in October 2014 the city hired its first ethics officer, who reported to the city attorney and city auditor. A bipartisan coalition called Citizens for Ethics Reform, bringing together the League of Women Voters and the Tea Party Network, wanted an ethics officer answerable to an independent board instead. According to WFSU, the coalition collected more than 20,000 signatures to put a charter amendment on the November 2014 Tallahassee ballot.

The city pushed back. In August 2014, WFSU reported, City Attorney Lew Shelley asked a court to keep the measure off the ballot, arguing it was vague about what a donor refund program would cost taxpayers. A circuit judge upheld the ballot wording, and on September 3, 2014 the City Commission approved the language. The amendment, as WFSU summarized it, cut the cap on contributions to city candidates to $250 from $1,000 and created the independent board to investigate complaints, run ethics training and an anti-corruption hotline.

On November 4, 2014, Tallahassee voters approved the ethics amendment with two-thirds in support. Because it was written into the charter, the City Commission cannot repeal the board by ordinance; only another charter amendment approved by city voters can.

The appointing authorities were chosen to keep any single officeholder from controlling the panel. Today five seats are filled individually by the City Commission, the Public Defender for the Second Judicial Circuit, the State Attorney for the Second Judicial Circuit, the President of Florida A&M University and the President of Florida State University, and two at-large seats complete the seven. The original design ran into trouble at the start: in February 2015, WFSU reported, the City Commission, the state prosecutor and the FSU and FAMU presidents had made appointments, but the chief judge of the Second Judicial Circuit declined to name one, leaving the new board unsure whether it could fill the gap itself.

The board's powers grew in steps. In December 2019 the City Commission voted to give the Tallahassee board greater authority, including the power to subpoena. Its jurisdiction stayed narrow in other ways: in July 2018, WFSU reported, its misuse-of-position authority covered only city elected and appointed officials, so it could not act on a complaint against an employee who was neither, even a high-ranking one.

The money and staff are set out in the charter too. The Tallahassee charter requires the City Commission to fund the Ethics Board at a level sufficient for its duties, and the board's office consists of the executive director and ethics officer, an administrative specialist and a contracted legal adviser. The board works on the city fiscal year that begins October 1, reviews a three-year strategic plan, currently covering 2025/2026 through 2027/2028, and has published annual reports each year from 2021 through 2025 on talgov.com.

The 2014 amendment also gave the Tallahassee board a role in campaign money. Section 63 of the City Charter lets registered voters who live inside the city limits claim a refund of up to $25 for a contribution to a City Commission or mayoral candidate, paid from city general revenue. For the 2025 to 2026 cycle, which runs January 1, 2025 to November 3, 2026, claims are due by January 20, 2027, according to the talgov.com program page. The refund drew debate early on; WFSU reported in 2016 that some commissioners questioned whether it worked.

Lobbying is the board's other recurring subject. The city has had a lobbying ordinance since 2011, and the Tallahassee Democrat reported in August 2023 that the city usually sees 30 or more lobbyists register each year but had only seven by that August, after the City Commission raised the annual registration fee from $25 to $500. Board members worried that consultants were influencing City Hall without registering, and a set of board proposals to tighten the lobbying ordinance had already been voted down by the commission in 2022.

A long-running dispute over outside boards was settled at the ballot box. On November 5, 2024, more than 72 percent of Tallahassee voters approved a charter change that, according to WFSU, applies the board's jurisdiction to city commissioners no matter what board they are serving on, including the Blueprint Intergovernmental Agency and the Community Redevelopment Agency. Those two boards control sales tax projects and the redevelopment money for the Greater Frenchtown/Southside and Downtown districts.

In May 2026 the board moved to the next layer. At its May 19, 2026 meeting at City Hall, the Tallahassee Democrat reported, the seven-member board unanimously approved a proposed ordinance applying the commission's abstention rules, including leaving the room, to members of every city voting body, citizens advisory committees included. It followed a complaint about a CRA advisory committee vote on a $30,000 appropriation for a mural project on South Monroe Street, which the board dismissed for legal insufficiency. City Attorney Amy Toman told the board in April 2026 that CRA advisory members fall outside its jurisdiction, and the proposals were scheduled for the June 10, 2026 City Commission meeting. The five city officials whose conduct sits at the center of the board's work are, per the City Leadership roster checked October 9, 2026, Mayor John E. Dailey and Commissioners Curtis Richardson, Jacqueline Jack Porter, Jeremy Matlow and Dianne Williams-Cox. Last verified: October 9, 2026, on the City of Tallahassee website.