Suspicious Minds

JEA’s "My Guy" Season, Week Two

JEA’s unpopular second season drama continued this past week, featuring the same characters we met in week one, plus some newbies. The central Kevin Carrico character and the Lenny Curry character, in a supporting role, were back, joined by the Donna Deegan character, the Elder Matt Carlucci character, the City of Jacksonville’s Inspector General character, and the Ron Salem character.

Our storyline took some twists and turns, making this tale difficult to follow and confusing the audience, but not altogether unexpected since most of our characters are political actors whose personal ambitions lurk in the shadows.

Mostly, we are suspicious. What is this drama about? What is yet to be revealed? What can we not see?

Recap: Two Story Lines

In week one, the Carrico character, who has the authority to appoint members to Jacksonville’s publicly owned utility, opened season two with an email to a sitting JEA board member explaining why he will not be reappointed to another term:

“What’s up bro… hey I owed a big favor to a friend and opted to put him on the JEA board as your term is expiring . . . Not sure if you wanted to stay but I needed to do this for my guy. Tab is on me when we link up next.”

That opening salvo raised eyebrows, given our collective memory of season one—Let’s Sell JEA—which involved a plot to sell our pride and joy, myriad investigations, suspicions about the Curry character’s involvement, and personal enrichment at the public’s expense, all of which ultimately landed JEA’s former CEO in the pokey.

Season one created and ended with a deeply suspicious—skeptical, maybe cynical—audience, although the Curry character tried to explain then and now that Let’s Sell JEA began with reasonable questions: what is the value of the public’s pride and joy, and what is its highest and best use? This season one central character suggested we could use JEA sale proceeds to pay down public debt, especially reducing our police and fire pension debt. Debt that grew when the Curry character was in charge.

But . . .

The audience objected. Seems our audience doesn’t appreciate drama that springs out of nowhere, wants to maintain ownership of its pride and joy, and is deeply suspicious about what will happen to its collective well being if our characters sell JEA.

While we pondered season two’s unexpected, opening episode—the “my guy” email— JEA’s board took center stage to introduce a second story line. Having heard complaints from some JEA staff members about the CEO’s management style, including unsubstantiated allegations about an internal ”toxic culture,” the board’s vice-chair secretly asked the CEO to resign. When other board members learned of his unauthorized behind the scenes request, they expressed dismay, voted their confidence in the CEO’s character by a margin of six-to-one, removed the vice-chair from consideration as the next board chair, and explained that JEA’s 2025 internal review did not reveal any corporate internal culture issues.

The audience was left hanging: why did the vice-chair character act on his own to unseat the CEO character?

While the “my guy” story line developed, our Deegan character grabbed the limelight, expressed confidence in the CEO, who had denied the allegations, and asserted that “bad actors” involved in season one’s plot to sell JEA are up to no good and are casting aspersions on the CEO’s character.

More audience suspicion: why undermine the CEO character?

Two storylines: the character of the Carrico character, and the character of the CEO character.

Week Two: Twists and Turns

Myriad twists and turns occurred during week two, forcing the audience to look this way and that, raising everyone’s eyebrows about bad actors and nefarious motives.

We witnessed major developments including:

• our State Attorney issuing a subpoena for any Carrico character correspondence that involved his doing a “personal favor” for “my guy,” and any of his correspondence about our CEO character;

• the Inspector General (IG) asking City Council to assign the Council auditor to help examine JEA’s commercial customer “capacity fee” practices;

• our Carrico character responding affirmatively to the IG’s request to, yes, allow the auditor to assist in analyzing JEA’s commercial customer fee practices, but to go much further by appointing a special investigative committee. In what appeared to be a Hail Mary attempt to shift the audience’s attention away from his “my guy” email, our Carrico character charged the special committee with conducting “an independent examination” of JEA’s internal culture, and JEA’s “compliance with applicable whistleblower protection laws and policies,” neither of which the IG requested. (You need to remember that the CEO character, in week one, eliminated JEA’s chief of staff position after the chief of staff complained to JEA’s board chair about the CEO’s character.); and

• our Ron Salem character, as chair of the special investigative committee, explaining that the committee will survey some former and 147 current JEA employees about JEA’s workplace culture. That’s 147 out of 2000 employees.

More audience suspicion: why does assigning the Council auditor to assist in examining financial records require a special committee? Is a special investigative committee the proper mechanism for examining an independent authority’s internal culture and management practices? What role exists for the JEA board character to whom the CEO character reports?

We also witnessed developments involving characters in supporting roles:

• our Deegan character called the special investigative committee “an overreach . . . for personal gain,” and “more of the same power play that traces back to the people who tried to sell off our publicly owned utility the first time,” that is, in season one;

• the Curry character, a partner with Ballard Partners, repeated his first week accusation that the Deegan character is “lying” about his character, and baited her character to make any accusations she has about his character “under oath;” and

• the Elder Carlucci explained that season two’s second story line, about JEA’s internal culture, emerged after and only after January 31, when JEA did not renew a contract with Ballard Partners, where season one’s Curry character is a partner, all of which, the Elder suggests, raises suspicions about why we are witnessing this drama in the first place. He also explained that the IG never asked the Carrico character to appoint a special investigative committee, but simply to allow the City Council’s auditor to provide assistance into a review of JEA’s commercial fee practices.

Now, three storylines: the Carrico character’s character, the CEO character’s character, JEA’s commercial financial practices.

Creating Suspicion

Creating suspicion and placing blame are this season’s through lines. Every good drama involves a crime or wrongdoing, antagonists—villains who commit crimes and the do-gooders who root them out—an examination of the crime, and some meting out of justice. As of yet, who is to blame for what exactly has not been firmly established and is difficult for the audience to discern.

Who are the villains, what are the crimes?

Antagonists, however, are aplenty: the Carrico character vs the Deegan character; the Curry character vs the Deegan character; City Council characters vs the CEO character; City Council characters vs the JEA board character.

In charging his special investigative committee to delve into JEA’s internal culture, our Carrico character wants the audience to believe that bad things are happening at JEA, and claims that our pride and joy faces a “crisis of confidence.”

A “crisis of confidence” might be in the offing, but by whom and in whom, well, let’s just say that’s debatable.

Our Deegan character claims that this is all made up by nefarious political characters lurking in the shadows who are creating suspicion where there should be none. “The thousands of hard-working employees,” she stated, “who keep our lights on and water running deserve better.”

Don’t we all?

The Commentators and the Audience

In trying to help the audience understand this drama as it unfolds—to help us maintain focus on the main storylines, the villains and their wrongdoings—local commentators seem exceptionally puzzled. Audience members we heard from, however, seem to be following the twists and turns fairly well.

In last week’s Week In Review, our host character called JEA “the utility that cannot elude controversy,” but yet is an “unavoidable” topic given the “current round of headlines” and “complicated storyline.” She invited her guest characters to help the audience make sense of it all. They seem confused. One asked if this entire season is simply a made-up political drama in which some City Council characters seek to raise eyebrows about our pride and joy, all for the purpose of using some suspicion about suggested JEA malfeasance against our Deegan character in next year’s election.

Hmm.

After all, these commentators asked, why has JEA’s commercial fees become an issue now?

Why now, they asked, when JEA itself has been engaged for some time in a negotiation with large commercial customers, whose utility usage has increased over time, involving interpretations of decades old agreements about commercial fee structures. Interesting little fact that bears repeating. The public may not have known, as reported by News4Jax, but JEA knows about and has been engaged in resolving disagreements with some commercial customers about the fees they may or may not owe. And JEA welcomes help from the City auditor, as reported by the Florida-Times Union.

Hmm.

Despite the “complicated storyline,” two audience members who called into Week in Review seem to be following this drama fairly well: one told the commentators that season two began with our Carrico character’s attempt to appoint “his boss” to the JEA board, and that “the rest is just a distraction.” The second said: “We don’t trust politicians with an asset like JEA.” They’re “trying to re-create once again an issue with JEA.”

Stay Tuned

As we close out week two, pay attention and remain suspicious. By the way, City Council’s special investigative committee is charged with reporting its findings “on or before June 30, 2026,” unless of course the next City Council president decides to extend its work.

And of course, we’re eager to hear from the State Attorney about any and all “my guy” correspondence about our CEO character.