We Got the Numbers Wrong. Sarasota, We Owe You an Apology.
LGAI retracts and restates its published vote totals for Commissioners Joe Neunder and Mark Smith after an internal data review found material errors in our spending and debt figures.
An accountability project is only as good as its arithmetic. Ours failed a completeness audit — and under our corrections policy, we are required to tell you exactly how, in public, immediately.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — For months, this site has published precise, sourced totals of every money vote cast by County Commissioners Joe Neunder and Mark Smith: 827 yes votes on spending, debt, and taxes for Dr. Neunder. 672 for Mr. Smith. $274,962,000 in new borrowing approved by both. Campaigns have quoted those numbers. Readers have repeated them. And they were wrong.
We are bequeathed a single duty by the citizens of Sarasota County: get the facts right. When a recent internal audit flagged discrepancies in our published totals, we froze the figures, re-opened the official record, and re-verified every roll call by hand against the Board's own minutes. Today we are correcting the record — and apologizing to the more than 487,000 residents who trusted our numbers.
So here is what our review found.
We did not overstate their records. We understated them. Every single number we got wrong was wrong in the commissioners' favor — $256.7 million worse than we reported.
Our published totals had silently stopped at April 7, 2026. The Board of County Commissioners kept meeting — and kept voting — on April 21, May 5, May 19, and June 2. The official minutes of those four meetings were already in our archive. The 43 money-vote roll callsinside them had never been counted. All 43 were yes votes by both commissioners. Not one changed their “no” columns.
The Correction, Side by Side
| Figure | We published | The actual record | We were under by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neunder — yes votes on your money | 827 | 866 | 39 votes |
| Smith — yes votes on your money | 672 | 713 | 41 votes |
| Neunder — spending approved | $2,952,128,214 | $3,082,945,142 | $130,816,928 |
| Smith — spending approved | $2,999,973,891 | $3,125,856,794 | $125,882,903 |
| New debt approved by both | $274,962,000 | $295,732,000 | $20,770,000 |
| Neunder — no votes | 10 | 10 | unchanged |
| Smith — no votes | 3 | 3 | unchanged |
All figures re-verified against the official minutes of every Board meeting from November 22, 2022 through June 2, 2026, plus Venice City Council minutes for Dr. Neunder's prior seat. Full row-by-row record: the Ledger.
The Vote We Missed Entirely
The single largest omission was one borrowing vote. On May 5, 2026 (Item 37), the Board approved $20,770,000 in pooled commercial-paper borrowing for the Stickney Point Road area improvements. Smith made the motion. Neunder seconded it.It passed 4–1 — Commissioner Knight cast the only no vote. That takes the new-debt total both men approved from 14 roll calls to 15, totaling $295,732,000.
Commissioner by Commissioner
Joe Neunder — District 4
- 866 yes votes on taxpayer money across two governments: 704 on the County Commission plus 162 on the Venice City Council.
- 10 no votes in his entire tenure — a 98.9% yes rate on money items.
- County spending he voted to approve: $3,082,945,142 — $130.8 million more than we had reported.
Mark Smith — District 2
- 713 yes votes on taxpayer money — every one on the Sarasota County Commission, his only elected office.
- 3 no votes in his entire tenure — a 99.6% yes rate on money items.
- County spending he voted to approve: $3,125,856,794 — $125.9 million more than we had reported.
What the Corrected Numbers Mean for You
Per resident — and per family of four (population 487,640)
The spending Dr. Neunder voted yes on works out to $6,322 for every man, woman, and child in Sarasota County — $25,289 per family of four.
The spending Mr. Smith voted yes on works out to $6,410 per resident — $25,641 per family of four.
The new debt they both approved adds $606 per resident — $2,426 per family of four — that must be paid back with interest.
How the Error Was Caught
The discrepancy was identified by a data scientist who recently joined LGAI's Boston office, where our data-integrity work is based. Applying high-throughput completeness algorithms that reconcile our vote database against the county's own published meeting calendar, the analysis flagged a silent gap: our totals ended at April 7 while the Board's calendar did not. Every roll call in the four missed meetings was then extracted and verified by hand against the official minutes.
“The most dangerous error in public data isn't a wrong number — it's a missing one. The record didn't change. Our count was incomplete, and the moment we knew, the only option was to say so publicly.”— LGAI Data Integrity Team, Boston
Our Corrections Policy
Every figure we publish is tied to a primary source — the Board's official minutes, action agendas, and adopted budgets, archived and linked from every row of the Ledger and documented at Sources & Methods. When we find an error, we correct it in public, explain it in plain language, and leave the record of the correction up. We were wrong by $256.7 million. It will not be softened, and it will not be buried. The commissioners' corrected records are now live on every page of this site.
About LGAI and SarasotaCountyFacts.org
Local Government Accountability (LGAI) publishes SarasotaCountyFacts.org, a public record of how Sarasota County government votes and spends. Every claim is sourced to official documents that readers can open themselves. LGAI is headquartered in Washington, D.C.; its data-integrity operations are based in its Boston office.
Media Contact
Newsroom, SarasotaCountyFacts.org — sarasotacountyfacts.org/contact