OCALA, FL (352today.com) – Among the many topics of discussion at the Marion County Board of County Commissioners‘ public meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 7 was the current makeup of the counties composing the District 5 Medical Examiner’s Office, and how and why that may change in the near future.
The medical examiner is the individual who performs autopsies, not just for criminal cases but for any suspicious death that occurs within District 5.
District 5 is composed currently of five counties–Citrus, Hernando, Lake, Marion and Sumter. These counties have made up this district for decades, and the medical examiner has been operating out of a building on Pine Street in Leesburg for a considerable length of time.
The current District 5 medical examiner is Dr. Barbara C. Wolf, of Leesburg, who also serves as the medical examiner for Seminole County’s District 24.
Looking for a place to land
In 2018, Seminole County approached the District 5 counties indicating that they were in a challenging situation as far as their medical examiner services, said Matthew “Guy” Minter, Marion County attorney. Formerly, there had been an agreement between Seminole County and Volusia County to share resources. When that agreement ended, Seminole County was looking to join other counties in a medical examiner’s district.
The District 5 counties entered into an interlocal agreement with Seminole County’s District 24, for that district to be able to join and use the District 5 medical examiner’s office, in 2018. Dr. Wolf agreed to provide medical examiner’s services for not only District 5 but District 24, operating out of the Leesburg facility.
One important provision of the 2018 agreement is a clause stating the understanding that the deal would neither increase District 5’s costs regarding maintaining its medical examiner’s services, nor reduce the level of those services to the District 5 counties. It also recognized at that time that it was the expectation of the District 5 counties that this agreement with Seminole County would cause the projected timeline for an upcoming expansion of the Leesburg facility to be accelerated.
On Oct. 24, 2024, all six parties entered into a new interlocal agreement, which included the provision that they would be working together on securing a new medical facility rather than expanding the current location. This came with the expectation that the medical examiner’s office would be acquiring a new site. As the administrator of District 5 business, Marion County did a lot of the work involved in finding the new location.
“After doing a lot of legwork, with input from the other participants in the agreement, we acquired a site in Oxford [in Sumter County], with the intent that we would all work together to develop a new facility at that location in lieu of the Leesburg facility that we are going to outgrow eventually.” said Minter. “In the 2024 agreement, it contemplated there would be a further agreement to get into specific details about how the expense of the new facility would be shared. The parties have never actually entered into this type of agreement.”
Expressing their concerns
In January 2025, Seminole County made it known that they no longer wanted to participate in the 2024 agreement, which doesn’t expire until 2029. The county had objections to the formula that was being used to apportion the operating expenses among all the parties, which is based on the population of each of the counties.
Seminole County made the case that, if one looked at the actual workload rather than population, it was actually shouldering an inordinate amount of the operating expenses, in effect subsidizing the other counties. The county was also not happy with the location of the proposed new facility in Oxford, citing that it would be more difficult to transport cases to the new facilities. Seminole indicated that it wanted to back out of the arrangement. During this tumultuous exchange, it also emerged that Lake County wanted to depart District 5, and join Seminole in District 24,
The whole thing resulted in Lake and Seminole counties going before the state Medical Examiners Commission, asking for Lake County to join Seminole County in District 24. The commission found that the application wasn’t well supported, and the counties’ request was denied without prejudice for a reapplication at some point in the future.
The meeting included discussion regarding what county or counties should be financially responsible for the new medical examiner’s facility in Oxford but ended without a clear resolution.