📉 A county audit found nearly $1 million in overpayments tied to years of lax transit oversight.
🚌 Commissioners halted a new five-year MV Transportation contract to reassess repayment and reform options.
⚖️ The pause sparked debate: financial accountability vs. protecting essential transit for elderly and disabled riders.
CRESTVIEW — An extensive audit detailing years of oversight failures and nearly $1 million in billing errors abruptly derailed Okaloosa County’s plans this week to approve a new five-year contract with its longtime transit operator, MV Transportation — a contract months in the making and the product of a formal, competitive procurement process.
Instead, commissioners voted unanimously to pause the agreement and extend the existing contract for up to two months while they assess whether the county should seek repayment from MV, renegotiate terms, or reimagine the future of public transit altogether.
The decision followed a tense, hour-long debate in which commissioners alternated between defending the essential role transit plays for seniors and disabled residents and condemning the county’s own failure to monitor a contract that ballooned in cost through unauthorized billing.
County staff had spent the summer and fall preparing for the transition to a new transit agreement. The current MV contract expires Dec. 31, 2025, with no available renewals.
A Request for Proposal (RFP) was issued in August; a Special Selection Committee evaluated four bidders — three of which were responsive — and on Oct. 31, 2025, the county issued a notice of intent to award the new contract to MV Transportation, its operator for 7 years.
The proposed agreement, up to $20 million, would have covered 2026 through 2030, with two optional one-year renewals. It included:
By all appearances, it was a standard renewal of a longstanding public service.
But the quiet release of a 35-page Inspector General audit in October changed everything.
The audit concluded that from 2019 to 2025, Okaloosa County failed to enforce its own contract requirements, verify documentation, or address issues that multiplied over the six years.
At the audit’s center were $850,000 in overpayments tied to a verbal agreement — never approved by the Board of County Commissioners — that allowed MV to bill “deadhead” hours: time paratransit vehicles spent traveling without passengers.
Commissioner Trey Goodwin, referencing the audit’s executive summary, read aloud: “The county had insufficient contract oversight… that contributed to overpayments exceeding $850,000.”
Goodwin said he could not, in good conscience, approve a new contract when the county had not even attempted to recover funds improperly paid.
“If any of us went to our bank and our loan officer said, ‘I’m sorry, I gave away $850,000 of your money,’ the first question we’d say is, what have you done to get it back?” he said. “And the answer… is going to be nothing.”
In his view, the question was not whether transit mattered — but whether the county could continue its partnership with MV without first addressing accountability.
Goodwin’s remarks underscored a longstanding tension in Okaloosa County: a desire to provide essential public services, and a belief among some residents that the fixed-route system is chronically underused.
“I still see the same problem… buses running around with no heads in the seats,” Goodwin said, describing a recent scene at Santa Rosa Mall where “two buses” sat empty while drivers stood nearby.
But other commissioners pushed back forcefully, arguing that transit is essential precisely because Okaloosa’s elderly and disabled residents cannot drive, and cannot wait for the county to fix its administrative problems before their transportation is restored.
Commissioner Carolyn Ketchel, the liaison on transit to the County Commission, framed the issue in moral terms rather than financial terms.
“When you go to Publix… and you see the disabled bagging your groceries, how do you think they get there?” she asked. “This is the responsibility of government… The numbers be darned in this case.”
Transit Director Tyrone Parker reported 57,000 fixed-route trips and 52,000 paratransit trips last year, a level of demand that surprised even some who once doubted the system’s viability.
Commissioner Sherri Cox, initially skeptical of public transportation, said she could not shake the thought of vulnerable residents during COVID-19.
“I cannot imagine how many fatalities we might have had if we didn’t have some kind of public transit getting our elderly and disabled… to those appointments,” she said.
As if the audit findings were not enough, commissioners learned during the meeting that the RFP for the new contract omitted a $500,000 performance bond—a standard safeguard in the current MV contract.
MV’s representative, Randy France, said the omission meant none of the bidders included the bond expense, but MV was willing to provide it anyway, absorbing the cost.
“We will eat the cost of that performance bond,” he said.
County Attorney Lynn Hoshihara confirmed the error, saying it likely resulted from a 2018 oversight that carried forward.
Goodwin suggested this might compromise the procurement process itself.
Caught between the need for continuity and reform, Chairman Paul Mixon pressed MV directly on whether it would consider repaying part of the overpayments.
“We’ve been tremendous partners,” Mixon told France. “I’m wondering if you’re willing to be tremendous partners today.”
France said MV had acted with written approval from county staff in several instances.
Ultimately, the board opted for a middle path: a two-month contract extension at the new proposed rates, giving staff time to study options and interview commissioners about their expectations.
Deputy Administrator Shelia Fitzgerald cautioned that without clear direction, the county risked returning to the same crossroads.
“We might find ourselves back here in the same place in two months,” she said.
Goodwin, for his part, made his stance clear: “Come next budget cycle,” he said, “I’m not going to vote to put $300,000… into the system.”
Even as commissioners debated the future, county staff have already updated their approach.
Many of the Inspector General’s recommendations — more explicit billing definitions, consolidated contracts, strengthened insurance requirements, and digital fare systems — appear in the new RFP.
But the larger question remains unresolved: Can Okaloosa County restore credibility to a system that, for years, operated on handshake deals and unverified invoices?
And perhaps more importantly: What does a sustainable public transit model look like in a county whose geography, population patterns, and limited funding have long made it difficult to run?
“Sometimes the right thing to do isn’t the easy thing to do,” Goodwin said.
(Editor’s Note: Mid Bay News requested interviews weeks ago with Okaloosa County officials on this subject. Those requests were denied. However, we sent questions to Deputy County Administrator Shelia Fitzgerald before Thanksgiving, and still have yet to hear back.)
Pro Communi Bono
St. Francis De Sales, Ora Pro Nobis!
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