CEO 84-34 -- May 18, 1984

FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE

APPLICABILITY OF DISCLOSURE LAW TO SPECIFIED EMPLOYEE AFTER LEAVING EMPLOYMENT

To: (Name withheld at the person's request.)

SUMMARY:

A "specified state employee" under Section 112.3145, Florida Statutes, should file a statement of financial interests for a calendar year even though he leaves that position after the end of that calendar year and before the disclosure deadline of July 1. However, due to a 1983 amendment to Section 112.3145(2)(b), the former employee no longer is required to file a statement of financial interests for the entire year in which he left his position.

QUESTION:

Are you, a former Assistant Division Director with the Department of Community Affairs, required to file a Form 1, Statement of Financial Interests, for the year 1983, where you retired from that position in January, 1984?

Your question is answered in the affirmative.

In your letter of inquiry you advise that you served as Assistant Director of the Division of Public Safety Planning and Assistance, Department of Community Affairs, until your retirement at the end of January, 1984. You question whether you are required to file a Form 1, Statement of Financial Interests, by July 1, 1984.

An assistant division director falls within the category of "specified state employee" for purposes of the financial disclosure law. Section 112.3145(1)(b)3, Florida Statutes. As a "specified state employee," you have been required to file statements of financial interests annually. These statements are required to be filed for the most recently completed calendar year, we have advised, so that statements filed in 1984 reflect financial interests for the year 1983. See CEO 82-72.

Until October 1, 1983, "specified state employees" were required to file statements of financial interests in accordance with Section 112.3145(2)(b), Florida Statutes, which provided:

Each state or local officer and each specified employee shall file a statement of financial interests no later than 12 o'clock noon of July 15 of each year, including the July 15 following the last year he is in office. [E.S.]

We interpreted the underlined phrase to require a specified employee to file financial disclosure no later than the July 15 following the calendar year in which he left his public employment. See CEO 77- 122. However, as of October 1, 1983, the Legislature amended this provision to read:

Each state or local officer and each specified state employee shall file a statement of financial interests no later than July 1 of each year. [Section 112.3145(2)(b), Florida Statutes (1983).]

Under the prior law, you would have been required to file in 1984 for the calendar year 1983, and then to file in 1985 for the calendar year 1984, the last calendar year in which you held your position. We believe that the Legislature, by amending the statute, meant to exclude what otherwise would have been your last financial disclosure statement, and that therefore you need not file a statement of financial interests by July 1 of 1985 for the year 1984.

In our view, persons in the position specified in the disclosure law become obligated to file disclosure for a given calendar year if they are in that position at the close of the calendar year. Although these persons have until July 1 to file disclosure, the obligation accrues at the end of the prior calendar year, the "disclosure period" by law. Section 112.312(8), Florida Statutes (1983).

Accordingly, as you served as Assistant Director during 1983 and were in that position at the end of that year, you should file a statement of financial interests for the year 1983 by July 1 of 1984.