Donna Deegan says investigations of JEA are ‘attacks on our consolidated government’

The Jacksonville City Council, the 4th Circuit State Attorney, and the Attorney General’s Office are all investigating issues related to JEA, Jacksonville’s public utility.

Mayor Donna Deegan frames the probes as undermining the structure of the utility and city government itself.

“Obviously, the State Attorney needs to investigate whatever she needs to investigate. But to have all these competing investigations, I think is a disservice to the independent authority,” Deegan said on WOKV, calling out the Council investigation specifically.

“And I worry, ultimately, that we are seeing more and more carveouts and attacks on our consolidated government.”

The City Council probe is focused on an allegedly toxic workplace culture under CEO Vickie Cavey, whom Deegan defended during a press conference earlier this year. It also is looking into uncollected capacity fees from commercial customers. Attorney General James Uthmeier and State Attorney Melissa Nelson are also looking into the termination of the lobbying contract with Ballard Partners.

Deegan isn’t “sure why” Uthmeier is investigating, but said all of the attention on the utility boils down to “hyperpartisanship.”

Deegan also defended getting involved in the affairs of JEA, which has a seven-person appointed board responsible for its governance and which is purportedly independent of elected officials.

“I promised to protect JEA when I was running for office,” she said.

“The citizens made it very clear. They did not appreciate what happened in the last round of issues that ended up putting a guy in jail. They want the utility to remain public, at least for the moment. And I’m going to defend that, and I’m going to make sure that efforts that I see to try to undermine that are called out. And beyond that, it’s not up to me.”

Deegan also took a position against a proposal to directly elect members of the JEA Board, saying that the best way to keep politics out of the process was for politicians to pick the appointees, rather than have its members accountable to voters.

“The last thing we need is a more politicized any of our independent boards. (E)lections would just incentivize people to throw so much big money into it, and then you’d have the same thing you have where you’d have folks trying to make it a partisan issue. And I’m just so convicted that we cannot be successful, not only in unifying our city, but in moving our city forward, with these types of attitudes,” Deegan said.

Jacksonville City Council President Kevin Carrico, a Republican, caused controversy this year when he told a sitting board member that he needed to leave his position because he owed his boss at the Boys and Girls Club of Northeast Florida the “big favor” of joining the board.