Expenditures and Revenues Reported by Florida's County Governments
Local governments are accountable for the manner in which they spend public funds, and the submission of financial reports required by state law is one method of demonstrating accountability. Two types of local government financial reporting are the Annual Financial Audit and the Annual Financial Report (AFR).
Section 218.39, F.S., requires all counties and those municipalities that meet a certain threshold for revenues or expenditures to have an annual financial audit of their accounts and records conducted by an independent certified public accountant within nine months after the end of its fiscal year. The statute requires these annual county financial audit reports to be filed with the State of Florida's Auditor General.
Section 218.32, F.S., requires counties, municipalities, and special districts to complete and submit to the Florida Department of Financial Services (DFS) a copy of its annual financial report (i.e., AFR) for the previous fiscal year no later than nine months after the end of the fiscal year. The AFR is not an audit but rather a unique financial document completed using a format (i.e., Uniform Accounting System Manual) prescribed by the DFS.
The Department of Financial Services (DFS) has created a web-based, Florida Open Financial Statement System, which allows interested parties to view and/or download local government financial data. Users can view or download AFRs submitted by local governments, create system-generated reports, and create customized reports for the years 2012 through 2023 from the Public Reports Menu.
In preparation for the implementation of GASB Statement No. 87, the Department added the Custodial Fund column to the AFR. FY 2020-21 is the first year of Custodial Fund reporting, which is used to account for assets held by a government in a purely custodial capacity. Since prior fiscal years do not include Custodial Fund reporting, the account totals may not be directly comparable. EDR made no adjustment, and the figures for FY 2020-21 and thereafter that are included in the applicable data sets reflect those reported by DFS.
Using AFR data obtained from these reporting systems, EDR staff prepared the following tabulations, which list individual county government's expenditure and revenue totals by account code and fund type for the most recent local fiscal years. Future and prior fiscal years will be added as the data become available and/or can be tabulated. A glossary of select financial terms used in these tabulations is available.
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Last Revised: November 27, 2024