Report details efforts to privatize the utility, outlines legislative recommendations
The Jacksonville City Council’s Special Investigatory Committee on JEA Matters has released the findings of its months-long investigation into the City’s attempts to sell JEA.
On February 4, 2020, President of the Jacksonville City Council, Scott Wilson, convened the Special Investigatory Committee on JEA Matters to investigate “the recent pursuit…to potentially privatize JEA” and to determine what problems “could be prevented in the future through legislative action.”
Released today, the Committee’s 138-page report, together with its appendices and a 242-page chronology of supporting documents, summarizes what happened, how it happened and recommends legislative action to prevent such an effort in the future.
The Committee retained Steve Busey as special counsel to assist the Committee in its investigation. Busey was assisted by Smith Hulsey & Busey attorneys Lanny Russell , Chris Dix , Kevin Blodgett and James Edgar .
The report and its supporting documents can be viewed in their entirety at JEAinvestigation.com .
According to Jacksonville City Council member and Committee chair Brenda Priestly Jackson, “The Committee found that the efforts to market and sell JEA from 2017 to 2020 were pursued by advancing a false narrative of JEA’s financial soundness, conducted with less-than-appropriate transparency, in many instances purposefully, and were further encumbered with an egregious plan by JEA’s senior management to personally profit from the sale. The report contains substantial detail supporting these findings, and makes recommendations to improve the City Charter and City ordinances regarding procurement, ethics, transparency and legislative investigations.”
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