By Nate Monroe / The Flroida Trib | Newly released text messages offer an unusual, but incomplete, view into a series of unguarded conversations between Jacksonville City Council President Kevin Carrico and a raft of his political allies, friends and colleagues.
Together, they show Carrico, a Republican, to be an enthusiastic political operator — joking, for example, about booting an ally of the city’s Democratic mayor from a committee assignment. They also show him repeatedly discussing public business with a tone that is at times flippant, at others cryptic and at turns remarkably direct. “Need this permit closed out bro,” he told one city zoning staffer in an undated message. “… it’s a favor to church for (former Jacksonville mayor) Lenny Curry.”
The manner of the text messages’ release is itself the subject of scrutiny, with a City Council staffer and former General Counsel at first saying that every record requested by local news organizations was provided, but later refusing a Florida Trib reporter access to inspect the files, acknowledging that they contained information that was withheld.
The texts were part of a batch of records Carrico had to turn over in response to a subpoena from State Attorney Melissa Nelson’s office to the council’s secretary, Jason Teal. The Florida Trib and a coalition of Jacksonville media organizations fought for the release of those records, which city council staffers initially said would cost nearly $4,000.
The State Attorney investigation is related to a winding controversy swirling around Carrico and the city’s publicly owned electric, water and sewer utility, JEA. Nelson’s office has declined to comment on any of the several subpoenas that the Trib and its news partner, News4Jax, have discovered in public records.
Council staff eventually reduced the cost of the subpoena records, but allowed Carrico to withhold some of the documents. The texts, for example, have often been stripped of context, and in several places the records have been visibly obscured.
When a Florida Trib reporter requested to inspect the original records in person, Teal then denied her, saying that the original records contained information that had been held back from the media.
Source: