- November 4, 2024
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Sally Sherman, Flagler County’s deputy county administrator of about 10 years, retired on Feb. 28. But she returned to work just days later — March 1 — as a consultant, with a different title: senior special projects coordinator.
She’s working for the county through Christian staffing firm JMI, and Flagler County is paying about an additional $19,000 for her position — part of the increase in the form of fees to JMI — while she’s also able to pull her state pension and receive her Florida Retirement System Deferred Retirement Option Program payout.
The situation was first reported by FlaglerLive.com.
Before her retirement, Sherman made $136,468.80 annually, plus benefits, travel and training that County Administrator Craig Coffey said took the total annual cost of her position up to about $170,000.
The county is now paying approximately an additional $19,000 for Sherman’s position, he said, taking the cost of her position up to $190,000. Sherman gets approximately $149,000 as salary, with the remainder going to JMI.
Coffey defended the arrangement.
“If I went to the rehire the DCA position with someone with the same years of experience, much less with her institutional knowledge of the County, the $19,000 would evaporate,” Coffey said in a written statement. “Additionally, I would still have to train the individual and bring them up to speed on everything Flagler County.”
The county is keeping her former position, deputy county administrator, open, with no immediate plans to fill it.
Coffey said that Sherman’s return doesn’t constitute “double-dipping,” the practice in which state employees would retire from an entity on the state retirement system, then immediately return to work for the state. A 2009 law barred state employees from retiring and then returning to work within six months of their retirement date. The six-month limit, lawmakers said at the time, was intended to incentivize employers that might have been inclined to rehire a retiree back to the same position from doing so.
Sherman, Coffey said, is not a public employee: She’s a private consultant. Coffey said that Sherman’s return shouldn’t be considered double-dipping because she’s not building a new retirement in the Florida Retirement System.
"She has earned her retirement and is not able to re-enter the FRS retirement system," he said. "Currently, you have other employees legally working in Flagler County and around the state on a second retirement in FRS, which was also legal at the time. Several years ago, the state law changed, which prevented employees from retiring and coming back into the system (spirit of the law) starting a second FRS retirement system."
