Jacksonville City Council member Rory Diamond is the child of South African immigrants. The Jacksonville Immigrant Rights Alliance has accused Diamond's amendments in the city's proposed 2025-26 budget as anti-immigrant. | Will Brown, Jacksonville Today
Published on September 10, 2025 at 2:13 am
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Four members of the Jacksonville City Council walked out of the chambers Tuesday night in protest during debate on the budget, which ultimately led lawmakers to remove amendments that would ban city taxpayer funding from benefiting undocumented immigrants; diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; and abortion.
The standoff pushed the preliminary budget vote late into the early morning hours and revealed divisions within the council — those who support what Beaches council member Rory Diamond calls his “Big Beautiful Budget Amendments” and those who call his policies “racist,” a “wedge” and “immaterial” to the next year’s proposed $2 billion general fund operating budget.
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The council also advanced Mayor Donna Deegan’s proposal to keep the city’s property tax millage rate flat after hours of deadlock Tuesday, but debate on the property tax rate set up a showdown on whether to cut the levy when it comes back for a final vote on Sept. 23.
Council approved council member Ju’Coby Pittman’s measure to strip Diamond’s funding prohibitions just after midnight in a 12-6 vote after it had failed to pass earlier in the evening.
Despite Tuesday’s win for opponents of Diamond’s provisions, the debate is not over. Diamond has pledged to reintroduce them when the council reconvenes in two weeks when it’s scheduled to take the final votes on the budget and millage rate.
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Republican Chris Miller, who was absent Tuesday on a trip to Israel in his capacity as a staffer for U.S. Rep. John Rutherford, is expected to be at the Sept. 23 meeting. Miller supports Diamond’s amendments. And some Republican members who voted to remove the language to end the marathon meeting and comply with state law that required passing a tentative city budget could reverse their votes again.
“What happens when we don’t have a budget is the Department of Revenue eventually takes over our budget, which is controlled by our (state) CFO (Blaise Ingoglia) and our governor (Ron DeSantis) and our cabinet,” Diamond said. “I feel much more confident in their hands than you all just simply stonewalling so we can’t get the 10 votes (to pass the budget).
“This isn’t going away. This is going to be in the budget. There is literally nothing you can do to stop it. The only thing you can do is force this into the hands of Tallahassee,” he said.
Council member Rahman Johnson said in a written statement that his decision to leave the dais Tuesday was “an act of conscience.”
“When council members openly legislate from the budget, they not only defy our local rules, but they also violate the state’s laws that protect municipal charters,” Johnson said. “My leaving the chamber was a gut reaction to some of my colleagues voting to say that people who look like me do not exist,” he said.
“The people of District 14 elected me to uphold the law, not to watch it trampled under the weight of ideology. This council chamber is not a stage for Washington theater. Jacksonville deserves governance, not grandstanding. What happened tonight sent a chilling message: People who look like me can be disregarded in order to score political points. I refuse to accept that,” said Johnson.
The walkout by Pittman, Johnson and members Jimmy Peluso and Reggie Gaffney Jr. happened moments after supporters of Diamond’s measures initially defeated Pittman’s amendment to strip the anti-DEI, immigration and abortion language from the budget.
After the four members left, the remaining council members made several attempts to pass the tentative budget but could not get the 10 votes needed.
Member Ron Salem then moved to bring back the millage rate for a vote. That forced the four Democrats to return to defend Deegan’s tax proposal. Once the protesting lawmakers returned, Salem withdrew his motion to consider the millage decrease, cementing that debate for next week.
Diamond, a member of the Finance Committee, introduced his budget amendments in the final hours of the committee’s budget hearings in August. Some of the language mirrors his local immigration legislation that Deegan vetoed in June, which also would have required city grant recipients to show public funding was not aiding undocumented immigrants.
Pittman was the lone Democrat on the seven-member Finance Committee. She called Diamond’s amendments selfish.
“These amendments, to me … they are very offensive, they’re racist and insulting backdoorish,” Pittman said. “It undermined the process, the transparency and most of all, the trust. It was a bullying tactic, self-serving and it wasn’t governing. Enough is enough.”
Diamond argues that DEI policies are racist.
“I didn’t hear any substantive arguments against this. Give me one good reason why we should spend $1 because we like one race or one gender more than another. I don’t think we should. And I guarantee you, if you ask the people of Jacksonville if they support that, they do not by huge majorities,” Diamond said.
For Pittman’s amendment to pass, members Raul Arias, Randy White, Will Lahnen and Ron Salem flipped their original no votes. They joined Matt Carlucci, Ken Amaro, Tyrona Clark-Murray, Michael Boylan, Pittman, Johnson, Peluso and Gaffney Jr. to move it. Arias was the first to urge his fellow Republicans to switch their vote to advance the budget.
Diamond, Carrico, council Vice President Nick Howland, Terrance Freeman, Joe Carlucci and Mike Gay voted against removing the funding prohibition.
The budget itself passed 14-2 with Joe Carlucci and Diamond as the two no votes. Gay and Freeman abstained due to possible conflicts of interest.
Property tax deadlock
Supporters of reducing the city’s millage rate struggled Tuesday night to force a vote on the tax cut. The council deadlocked in a 9-9 vote on advancing Mayor Deegan’s proposed millage stasis.
Salem switched his vote to break the tie, advance the flat millage rate and move the tax cut debate to Sept. 23.
The Finance Committee last month advanced a recommendation to chip ⅛-mill off the city’s property tax rate, which would lock in a nearly $14 million drop in projected revenue next year and cuts funding increases and new programs in Deegan’s proposed operating budget.
Miller’s absence Tuesday, coupled with recent public opposition by the Jacksonville Civic Council and the local police and firefighters unions to cutting the tax, weighed on the debate.
The mayor and those civic groups have argued that dropping the tax rate would take away revenue that could be used for public safety, infrastructure and other essential services. Deegan has hit the town hall circuit in the lead-up to the budget debate with a message that the proposed millage cut would save the average Duval County homeowner only $1 per month.
Proponents of the lower rate say the city’s higher-than-expected revenue coupled with the rising cost of living warrants the tax cut.
Since the vote on the millage cut was delayed for two weeks, Council member Randy White decided Tuesday night to withdraw legislation meant to protect public safety services from a property tax cut.
White’s bill would have moved $13.47 million from the city’s emergency reserves into a police and fire contingency fund to make up for projected revenue loss from cutting the millage.
White, a veteran of the Jacksonville Fire & Rescue Department, is poised to vote against the millage cut on Sept. 23 in support of the police and fire union’s opposition.
Deegan issued a statement about the debate Wednesday morning praising the move to remove Diamond’s amendment language.
“I’m grateful to the council members who voted with courage to maintain our existing property tax rate, already the lowest of any major city in Florida. They joined our police and fire unions, community and business leaders, and thousands of citizens who have spoken out in support of Jacksonville having the resources for essential services and the investments we proposed to help working families struggling for housing, health, and food,” Deegan said in a news release.
“In addition, I thank the council members who voted to remove divisive culture war amendments that don’t belong in our city laws, much less in a budget bill,” she said. “We will continue working with the City Council to pass a final budget that capitalizes on our momentum and invests in our people.”
