OPINION | Smoking gun? Firearm registry presents reputational challenge for Donna Deegan

We are heading into the second week of the controversy about what critics are calling an illegal gun registry maintained at the behest of the mayor’s office in City Hall and the Yates Building.

Who’s to blame?

Neither Deegan nor predecessor Lenny Curry is taking responsibility, which raises the question of who is more likely of the two to take gun control measures that violate state law. Curry was endorsed by the National Rifle Association’s PAC when he ran for mayor. Even if he fretted about the permitless carry law taking effect the day after he’d no longer be mayor, would he really have commissioned the memo?

So far, the current mayor’s version of events is missing the target.

Deegan’s staff has held the mayor harmless, which strains credulity given that she has been mayor since the day after Facilities Manager Mike Soto drafted the “Check Points and Perimeter Security” memo on June 30, 2023.

Are we to believe that the mayor, who purportedly was elected to herald a new day of transparency and accessibility in City Hall – or her staff, including governmental veteran (and media alum also) Karen Bowling – simply wasn’t aware that security was urged “at a minimum,” to record the name, state-issued photo ID, unique identification number, age, (and) weapon type in the WEAPON AND FIREARM LOGBOOK”?

It’s hard to imagine that happening under the watch of Sam Mousa, who was well known for digging into the intricacies of every city department and process when he prowled the St. James Building as a senior administrator for various mayors over the years.

But Sam Mousa isn’t with us. And there is no contemporary equivalent.

So we get excuses, like: “The June 30, 2023, final draft clearly shows that the policy was created and written in the waning days of the Curry Administration. As it was previously noted at the Rules Committee meeting, the Deegan Administration was not made aware of the policy until April 21, 2025.”

This is kind of like Richard Nixon claiming he didn’t know about the Watergate break-in until the day before he resigned. Or George W. Bush claiming he didn’t know there weren’t really weapons of mass destruction in Iraq until he started his post-presidency painting career. Or Ronald Reagan’s fusillade of “I don’t recalls” when asked about the Iran-Contra affair after he left the White House.

There are no shortage of six-figure staffers and well-compensated cronies in the mayor’s office. Wouldn’t they, day in and day out, have walked by the security stations? Wouldn’t they have, on some occasion, had a reason to ask security about the logbook they were keeping? Or about their job writ large?

The mayor’s transition team had access to staffers like Soto before Deegan took office; her staff denies any such urging to the facility manager to draft a policy that violates Florida Statutes 790.335, which, in theory, could lead to third-degree felony charges and a $5 million fine for someone.

The mayor’s office has lawyered up with a nepotistic hire: the firm of Hank Coxe, the father-in-law of General Counsel Michael Fackler.

What does that deal look like?

Who knows? It’s an oral agreement, billed at an hourly rate, supposedly. But Mayor Transparency can’t tell us how much Coxe’s firm is getting paid, and since there are no documents, you’ve just gotta trust them.

The Mayor’s Office has produced ethics opinions and opinions from previous attorneys general (remember Jim Smith?) that make the case that an external hire of a relative doesn’t violate Florida Statutes 112.3135, which stipulates that a  “public official may not appoint, employ, promote, or advance, or advocate for appointment, employment, promotion, or advancement, in or to a position in the agency in which the official is serving or over which the official exercises jurisdiction or control any individual who is a relative of the public official.”

Reassuring.

Will those documents from yesteryear mean much in this context?

TBD.

It’s ironic that Fackler, who came into City Hall with no experience in municipal code of the sort that employees of the Office of General Counsel have, has spent so much of his tenure promulgating novel reinterpretations of local law that serve the purposes of the mayor’s office. Because that kind of postmodern approach very well could be embraced by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who has no name recognition and faces an election in 2026, and who would be all too happy to make an example of a major city’s Democratic mayor. 

To put it more simply: What exactly binds him to the opinions of former AGs and forgotten ethics commissions?

And why would the Mayor’s Office bet city time and treasure on that? 

There are even some wondering how tough State Attorney Melissa Nelson will be in this case, given her strong professional relationship with Coxe over the years. 

There is precedent for moving the case away from a potentially conflicted state attorney to someone who doesn’t have the city’s lawyer on speed dial, and that is an avenue available to Uthmeier, should he want to take it. 

Ultimately, the discovery here will be worth watching. 

What did the mayor know, when did she know it, and why didn’t she know it sooner?

Which staffers served her poorly by not tipping her off?

What consequences do they face?

Do they face any at all? 

There needs to be an expeditious investigation. And answers need to be clear and forthright, delivered in real time and not as part of some pre-holiday Friday news dump.