Public records delay: City releases council prez’s subpoena response after more than 100 days

After months of public-records requests by Jacksonville Today and other local outlets, and attorney intervention, the Jacksonville City Council on Tuesday released President Kevin Carrico’s response to a Feb. 24 subpoena from the State Attorney’s Office. 

Jacksonville Today has the records and will follow up with a story on what is in them as soon as possible. 

To date, the State Attorney’s Office has not confirmed why it’s looking into Carrico’s communications. The documents could shed light on what law enforcement was investigating, and what prosecutors may have seen that led them to issue another subpoena to JEA last month, that one seeking information about Carrico’s discussions with a lobbying firm.

The February subpoena sought electronic, social media, written and audio-visual communications between Carrico and his boss, Boys & Girls Club of Northeast Florida CEO Paul Martinez, related to Martinez’ appointment to the city utility JEA’s board.

The state attorney’s probe also demanded any communications between Carrico and JEA board members, the city utility’s CEO Vickie Cavey, JEA’s former Chief of Staff Kurt Wilson and documents containing words and phrases including “lobbying contract,” “toxic,” and “racist.”

Jacksonville Today first requested copies of what Carrico gathered to comply with the subpoena more than 100 days ago, on Feb. 27.

Jennifer Mansfield  — a partner with Holland & Knight who practices media and First Amendment law — had argued for the records’ release on behalf of Jacksonville Today and six other local outlets that had also requested them. She said the state attorney’s subpoena only sought documents from the City Council regarding official duties, so all responsive documents would be public records. 

Part of the justification for the delay that Council Secretary and in-house legislative counsel Jason Teal provided was that Carrico would be out of office and therefore couldn’t review the records he’d already provided to the State Attorney’s Office. 

“Why someone else could not review those documents, instead of Councilman Carrico, has never been explained. The totality of what happened and the continuing delays support a conclusion that delay has been – and continues to be – the goal all along,” Mansfield said on Monday, the day before the release. 

Crafting the request 

State Attorney Melissa Nelson’s Office issued the subpoena about a week after media reports of a text message Carrico sent to JEA board member Arthur Adams saying he would not be renominating Adams for the board. Instead, Carrico texted Adams, he would nominate the Boys & Girls Club CEO because he owed him “a big favor.” 

Mansfield says the way Jacksonville Today phrased its public records request should have minimized city staff’s amount of work and the time it would take to release the documents.

“The public records request was crafted so there wouldn’t have to be any additional work after the subpoena was responded to,” Mansfield says. “And that was smart, because you can avoid costs that way because there wouldn’t be any additional work.” 

Still, the city initially returned an estimate of $3,976.50 to compile and comb through the records. State law requires government agencies to check records for confidential and exempt documents. Those categories include personal communications not relevant to the public records request. Carrico himself planned to spend four hours reviewing the response before the documents were released. 

By this time, most media outlets in town had submitted requests for the same records. 

Mansfield and attorney Susan Erdelyi — an attorney with Marks Gray who represents Jacksonville Today news partner WJXT Channel 4 News4Jax — argued with Teal that the cost was unreasonable. 

“The dispute was the large number of hours that the city was claiming it had to charge for to re-gather the documents that had already been gathered and provided to the State Attorney’s Office because they said they didn’t keep a copy,” Mansfield said.

The city estimated Carrico would take 45 hours to recreate his search. 

Jacksonville Today also requested an invoice for records that the council president may have sent to the State Attorney’s Office for the response. One was not produced. 

“Under Florida law, Councilman Carrico could have billed the State Attorney’s Office for his original time to gather the subpoenaed documents. Because he didn’t, the bill appears to be an artifice to producing the documents. It purposely drove up the bill, but also, potentially more important, the time required before media could receive the documents,” Mansfield said.

According to Mansfield, a conversation with Teal revealed that Carrico printed out text messages and other documents using a city printer. Teal told Mansfield he did not review the documents before Carrico hand-delivered them to the State Attorney’s Office in March.

That was despite the fact that the subpoena was addressed to Teal  — who was the city’s former top attorney at the end of Mayor Lenny Curry’s administration. 

Mansfield found Teal’s lack of review surprising. 

“As an attorney myself, I would think it would be very unusual for an attorney who’s served with a subpoena not to look at the response before it goes out. And that’s what struck us,” she said. 

Florida public records law

Mansfield and Erdelyi say the subpoena response is a public record, and the city had the obligation to keep a copy, just as officials must retain all documents under Florida’s open records law.

“The fact that they would not keep a copy of a response to a subpoena directed to the city council is problematic in-and-of-itself,” Mansfield said, especially considering Jacksonville Today’s public-records request was pending even before Carrico responded to the subpoena. 

Amid the attorneys’ pushback, the city ultimately requested a copy of the records from the state attorney. That resulted in a new public-records cost estimate of $267.20. Jacksonville Today split that cost and is sharing the records with six other media outlets.