Tommy Hazouri “disappointed” in Jax Council leadership

Jax City Council members Tommy Hazouri and Lori Boyer, 9.9.2015

Jacksonville City Councilman Tommy Hazouri expressed disappointment Monday at how the HRO Committee of the Whole went last week.

Hazouri’s specific beefs are with Council leadership; Council VP Lori Boyer introduced a motion for withdrawal of Hazouri’s bill, a move supported by Council President Greg Anderson.

“I’m disappointed that leadership would do that,” Hazouri said in a telephone conversation. Such a motion calls into question whether leadership has “support for the mayor or City Council.”

“That’s not the Lori I know, carrying water for the mayor for whatever reason,” Hazouri lamented.

One of Hazouri’s objections was the surprise element of the withdrawal motion.

Boyer “didn’t tell the sponsor (in a sunshine meeting),” Hazouri said, raising the question of whether Council Leadership has “more respect for the mayor than colleagues.”

Hazouri, who was mayor from 1987 to 1991, noted that the procedural maneuvering “makes you more keenly aware of what goes on,” regarding “taking advantage of rules [on an] issue that means so much to so many people.”

“I think we’re shirking our responsibilities,” Hazouri said of the proposed withdrawal. He compared it to “swimming halfway across the English Channel, getting tired, turning around, and swimming back.”

The “changed course,” Hazouri said, is “insulting to the body and supporters of the expanded HRO.”

Hazouri was blunt when it came to Mayor Lenny Curry and his departmental directive to extend employment protections to city workers and vendors, saying it “does nothing for the LGBT community.”

“The mayor didn’t come out with legislation,” Hazouri said, so there is nothing to be compared “side by side by side” with the two live bills in the process.

Hazouri noted that, during his term, he issued a similar order establishing minority set asides in city contracts that was eventually ratified in legislation during the term of Ed Austin, his successor.

“Executive orders are not meant to last forever,” Hazouri said, and this one is “kicking the can down the road.”

Hazouri also doesn’t see Curry’s incrementalist move as forestalling a referendum.

“If they’re concerned about a referendum,” Hazouri said it doesn’t matter because they’re “going to get one.”

Meanwhile, issues such as “violence in the city” and the pension tax referendum are “not going to get resolved by not dealing with the HRO.”