Seventy-Five Million a Year. Fill Out the Form.

The city’s own repair figure runs closer to $1,500. The distance between the two numbers is $531.

Article VI, Section 4 of the Florida Constitution bars a person convicted of a felony from holding elected office until civil rights are restored. A misdemeanor carries no such bar. Deerfield Beach votes in March. Herz has not said whether he is running.

I asked one question. How did BSO arrive at $969. Who calculated it, from what estimate, and who reviewed it.

Deerfield Beach has bought its policing from BSO for about thirty years. The current bill runs roughly $75 million a year. In January 2026 the commission voted to separate. A later commission can reverse that vote, which is the whole reason the next four paragraphs matter to anyone who lives here.

July 28, 12:57 PM. I asked Mayor Todd Drosky whether Captain Adam Hofstein could pull the incident report. Hofstein commands District 10. District 10 is Deerfield Beach. The report was written about a building the city owns, by deputies the city pays for, under a contract the city signs.

July 30, 5:33 PM. City Manager Rodney Brimlow wrote that the City “does neither possess nor maintains this record.” Deerfield Beach spends $75 million a year on law enforcement and holds no copy of the police report about its own City Hall.

July 30, 5:59 PM. Hofstein: “I cannot release any official documents outside of the PRR work flow.”

August 2, 9:13 PM. A Sunday night. Hofstein again, this time with a link to the records portal.

People who work with him say relations between Hofstein and city leadership have cooled since the separation vote. He answers a blogger at 9:13 on a Sunday. The city gets a URL.

Here is the problem with the sentence he wrote. Deerfield-News.com receives incident reports from BSO’s public information office. So does every outlet in the county. Carey Codd does not send reporters portal links and a ticket number. He sends the report. That is the job description of a public information officer, and it has been the practice for years.

So I took Hofstein at his word and filed a request asking BSO to produce the written policy or directive that requires all records to move through the portal. Four lines. One document. If none exists, say so in writing.

August 2, 9:55 PM. BSO acknowledged it as R569673-080226 and added, in bold, that this request type does not include incident reports. Correct. I had not asked for one. I asked whether the rule a captain cited to me exists on paper.

No answer on that one either.

Either the policy exists, in which case Codd has been violating it every week for years and somebody should explain why. Or it does not exist, in which case a district captain invented a procedure to avoid handing a document to the taxpayers who fund his district. There is no third answer.

The portal is not the process. The portal is the product.

In March I asked BSO who has access to the sheriff’s training facility. Twenty-eight categories. BSO produced two documents and closed the case as fulfilled. I threatened litigation. Fifteen more documents arrived, along with two private organizations operating out of that building with no lease, free of charge, furniture included. Same request. Same records. The variable was the lawyer.

I have also been asking how Sheriff Gregory Tony’s wife, Holly, appears to move through a secured BSO facility without an escort, and who issued the credential that lets her. BSO certified in writing that no record exists showing who approved access for anyone who does not work there. One badge would disprove that. So either nobody outside BSO ever got one, or somebody did and nobody wrote it down.

Then I asked for the status log showing how the March request got closed and reopened. BSO quoted $400. Four hundred dollars for the activity log of the software BSO uses to track its own delays. The records director had told me days earlier that the case was never closed and I should refresh my screen. One of those two things costs $400 to prove.

Disclosure, since I hold everyone else to it. I have prior electoral history with Herz and prior litigation involving him. Neither of those changes what 806.13 says or what BSO wrote down. You should know it before you read another word from me on this.

Thirty years, $75 million a year, and the city that signs the check gets told to fill out a form.

Records cost money. So does silence.

On July 31, 2026, BSO Custodian of Records Erin Foley told me it would cost $400 before the agency answers eight pending public records requests. Fifty dollars an hour, eight hours, one determination covering all eight. The same letter says BSO cannot know how many records exist until it starts looking. Foley reserved the right to revise the estimate when the eight hours run out. The meter is open ended.

Copies run 15 cents a page under § 119.07(4)(a). Certified copies run a dollar. A pre-suit notice under § 119.12(1)(b) is worth nothing without certified mail and the green card. A circuit civil filing fee in the Seventeenth runs $401.

$25 covers a certified copy set. $100 covers a pre-suit notice with return receipt. $401 covers one filing fee. The first $2,500 clears the $400 gate, pays the copy and mail costs on the eight pending requests, and funds one circuit filing if BSO refuses.

There is no newsroom paying these invoices. No legal department, no grant, no staff. The requests get filed because somebody pays the copy fee, and so far that somebody has been the same account that buys groceries.

Nothing comes back to you. No perks, no early access, no comped anything. Every record produced gets published. Every denial gets published. Every fee letter gets published, including the ones that make me look wrong. If BSO produces nothing, that gets published too, because an agency that certifies in writing that no records exist has said something it has to live with.

This is a personal fundraiser. Donations are gifts, not tax deductible, and I am not a nonprofit. I have run for office in Deerfield Beach, served twice as a housing commissioner here, and been a party in litigation involving people named in this work. That disclosure belongs above the button, so here it is.

Deerfield Beach pays $75 million a year and got a portal link. Chip in what a copy set costs, then watch what shows up.

Records Cost Money. So Does Silence.

Press play. Tick.

Chaz Stevens is a First Amendment practitioner in Deerfield Beach, Florida. His work forced one governor to rewrite state law, and the governor wrote him into the bill by name. Oh, hell yeah! He drafts civil litigation pleadings and engineers public records work product for licensed attorneys at Sufficient to Show, and is the founder of REVOLT Training.