Dual Office Holding

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This training session will cover the topic of dual office holding.

Dual office holding is when a person holds more than one office under the government of the State of Florida or one of the counties or municipalities of Florida.

With a few exceptions, the Florida Constitution prohibits dual office holding.

The purpose behind this rule is to prevent conflicts of interest between the sometimes competing duties of government offices and to prevent the over concentration of government authority in the hands of a few memberships on some boards and committees of the City of Orlando constitute an office for purposes of the dual office holding prohibition.

This is why the city's application form for nomination to a board or committee asks you whether or not you hold any other state or local government position.

If the board or committee on which you serve is considered one of these offices, you should not accept an appointment to another state, county or municipal office without first resigning from your existing board or committee.

The City Clerk's office maintains a list of all the city boards or committees that constitute an office for purposes of the constitutional prohibition.

If you would like to know whether your board or committee is such an office, just ask us.

The purpose of this training session is to make you aware of this rule and to help you avoid inadvertently accepting a nomination to a second state or local office because the consequences of accepting a second office is the automatic vacation of the first office.

The City of Orlando can be confronted with an abrupt vacancy in one of our boards or committees if you accept a second state office without first informing the city and then tendering your resignation in time for the city to fill your former office.

Even worse, if you accept a second state or local government office and mistakenly continue to act as if you hold the city office, you may place at risk the decisions and acts of the city board or committee on which you are serving.

For these reasons, it's important that you understand the basic dual office holding rule and ask the City Clerk's office or the City Attorney's office if you have any questions about the rule.

The dual office holding rule comes from Article 2, Section 5 of the Florida Constitution, which provides in part that no person shall hold at the same time more than one office under the government of the state and the counties and municipalities therein.

The Florida Constitution provides only the following six:

1. A notary public
2. A military officer
3. A member of the Florida Constitutional Revision Commission
4. A member of the Florida Taxation and Budget Reform Commission
5. A member of the Constitutional Convention and
6. A member of the statutory body having only advisory powers.

Unless you hold one of these offices, you may generally hold only one government office in Florida, it is not necessary for the two offices to be within the same governmental agency for the rule to apply.

The rule applies to elected office, but also to appointed office, like many of the boards and committees of the City of Orlando.

In some rare cases it may even apply to certain classes of government employees, such as a police chief or a city manager.

The tricky thing about this rule is that the Florida Constitution does not define an office for purposes of the dual office holding prohibition.

Instead, we have to refer to an assortment of court opinions and advisory opinions from the Florida Attorney General in order to ascertain whether a particular board or committee constitutes an office.

The general rule, however, is that an office must involve the delegation of some portion of the state's or local government's sovereign power in order to constitute an office under the dual office holding rule.

In other words, usually an office involves membership on a board or committee that has some final decision making authority on behalf of the government.

This will include membership on a city or county commission, a city or county code enforcement board, and planning and zoning boards that make final decisions for the local government.

Usually it will not include boards or committees that have only advisory powers, such as the Public Art Advisory Board.

But remember, this rule has many exceptions.

The cases interpreting the rule are complex, numerous and very fact specific, and the ultimate answer often depends on a careful analysis of state statutes or law, local ordinances.

Sometimes boards or committees under different local governments, but with similar names and apparent duties, actually have technically distinct legal powers and thus one may be in office and the other not.

This is why we ask that you consult with the City Clerk's office or the City Attorney's office whenever you have a question about whether to accept another government position of any kind.

Most city boards and committees will have a city attorney assigned to assist your board or committee with its work.

If you do not, or if you do not know your assigned city attorney, please ask your board secretary or other city staff and they can easily get you in contact with us.