A.G. Gancarski
While some members of the Jacksonville City Council don’t want the JEA Special Committee to target LeAnna Cumber, the Council President is not one of them.
As planned, Terrance Freeman’s JEA Special Committee started up with a four-person panel and a focus solely on Cumber’s alleged misdeeds. The body is probing “whether the Committee was deceived or misled by Council Member Cumber or JEA Public Power Partners responding to subpoenas or making disclosures” and “whether Council Member Cumber attempted to use her official position to influence the (Invitation to Negotiate) process for personal gain.”
Their request was prompted by a Florida Times-Union report that Husein Cumber “assisted a private equity firm when it brought together a consortium of companies called JEA Public Power Partners that offered to pay a concession fee for the right to manage JEA while the utility remained city-owned.”
The committee displays the intertwined nature of Jacksonville politics, laden with conflicts of interest all their own. Freeman worked for the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce, and that nonprofit’s CEO, Daniel Davis, is a Republican running for Mayor as well.
The reopening of the committee comes after two other City Council members supportive of the Davis mayoral campaign, Republicans Rory Diamond and Nick Howland, called for an investigation into Cumber. They are both on the committee as Chair and Vice Chair respectively, though Diamond will leave for military service before the next meeting, slated for Feb. 23.
Though some, including committee member Michael Boylan, agree with Cumber that the committee is being weaponized against her campaign for Mayor, the committee began proceedings nonetheless, with much of the first day Wednesday spent attempting to defray contentions that the end goal is a political take down.
“The truth matters,” Diamond said, contending people “deserve to know” if “one of their elected Council members was honest with them.”
As was the case with the previous committee, the rebooted committee will have subpoena power, but doesn’t appear likely to use it. Seventeen subpoenas were sent out under the committee’s previous iteration. As Diamond reiterated, those subpoenas previously included the aforementioned JEA Public Power Partners, which said it considered hiring Husein Cumber but did not. Meanwhile, Councilwoman Cumber offered a late and ultimately disputed disclosure that did not offer insight into that JEA PPP consideration.
“That brings us to where we are today,” Diamond said, contending JEA PPP was not “honest about who was on their team” and that Council member Cumber likewise appeared not to be “honest” about her husband’s involvement.
“To simply say you can lie to that committee and get away with it is a problem,” Diamond contended.
Committee members had their say. Howland said he was “just interested in the truth” and was “floored” by Cumber’s seeming nondisclosure. The “timing” of the investigation was secondary to the public’s “need to know,” he added, even if Mr. Cumber was an “FBI informant” as Mrs. Cumber suggested.
“How is her submission not misleading and not untrue?” Howland asked.
Former Council President Sam Newby, another member, said he could be “fair and unbiased” and could “get to the truth,” though he worried the perception was that this panel was “political” and a “witch hunt.”
“We are in political season,” said Newby. “Let’s be honest.”
Boylan questioned the “process,” the “optics,” and the committee’s “authority,” meanwhile, saying he was “very concerned” and wondered if “this was a can of worms we want to open.”
Diamond got validation from John Phillips of the Office of General Counsel that the Council’s “fairly broad authority to investigate these types of things” prevails here as well, disputing a contention from Cumber’s lawyer Daniel Bean that the current investigation is out of bounds.
“The bottom line is: good idea, bad idea, I don’t know, but legally authorized, yes,” Phillips said, noting that the Council ethics code requires “cooperation” with official investigations like this.
Any subpoena would have to be approved by the Rules Committee, meanwhile, and Phillips suggested outside counsel would be the vehicle for that were it required given the conflict of interest created for city lawyers by “clients fighting with each other.”
Boylan lobbied Phillips to turn the investigation over to the independent Ethics Commission, but while there may be “good reasons” for that, there is no legal requirement by Council to punt on its own inquiry, appearances of bias notwithstanding. The committee may revisit a motion to that end in a future meeting, but Diamond contended that was “premature” at this point.
Diamond suggested that an external referral may be the endgame of the committee after all, and that he has “no interest in election dates or any of that stuff.” The committee should “narrowly target what we need to do our job,” and attempt to get “voluntary” updates of disclosures and “new and additional information” from JEA PPP, JEA, and the city itself from the timeframe of the committee’s original charge.
The committee would also “invite” Council member Cumber to “clear the air,” even though Newby and Boylan were skeptical she would update her disclosure and appear for a voluntary inquiry.
