St. Johns County Commissioner Krista Joseph waves an American flag as she begins her comments during a meeting Nov. 21, 2023. | St. Johns County
Published on April 15, 2025 at 2:32 pm
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A split St. Johns County Commission agreed Tuesday to spend taxpayer money to cover legal fees spent countering an investigation into one of their own.
After she was censured for encouraging the public to vote against her fellow county commissioners during a public meeting in 2023, the St. Johns County Commission (minus Commissioner Krista Joseph) agreed to investigate whether Joseph broke the law.
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It wasn’t until almost a year later that a federal judge cleared Joseph of wrongdoing.
Now, the County Commission, by a 3-2 vote, approved the expenditure of $110,000 to cover legal fees Joseph spent countering the investigation.
The expenditure is in addition to $25,000 the county previously spent in legal fees.
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Joseph’s attorney, Bradley Russell, initially requested a higher payout of $134,004.90, but County Commissioner Clay Murphy, the swing vote in the decision, wasn’t keen on the higher bill.
“The taxpayer gets the bill both ways,” Murphy said, “and that’s frustrating to me.”
While Russell explained the costs that led to the $134,000 bill, Murphy and other members of the County Commission expressed that they would have preferred to see an itemized bill, which Russell did not provide.
County Commissioner Ann Taylor was quick to support Joseph, but commissioners Christian Whitehurst and Sarah Arnold — both of whom supported Joseph’s censure and the investigation in 2023 — were more skeptical.
“If we are looking at spending this much in taxpayer dollars,” Arnold said, “this just isn’t transparent enough for me.”
Since Joseph’s lawsuit was targeted in the investigation into whether she broke the law, Whitehurst argued that Russell should ask the State Attorney’s Office for the money, not the County Commission.
“You’re coming after a board that does not have the authority to prosecute. We simply wondered out loud whether there was any wrongdoing and then we asked for an investigation into that wrongdoing,” Whitehurst said. “If we award a bill for an exorbitant amount of money in my opinion for wondering out loud whether or not anything was done that was in error of the law, then you’re going to chill that kind of conversation.”
Russell disagreed, saying the problem with the investigation into Joseph’s behavior was that it was not done “in good faith.”
Arnold and Whitehurst voted against the payment to Joseph’s attorney, while Joseph, Taylor and Murphy voted in favor of the measure.
