Mayor Donna Deegan speaks to reporters about her veto of a local immigration bill at City Hall. | Mike Mendenhall, Jacksonville Today.
Published on September 11, 2025 at 5:41 pm
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Jacksonville’s top city attorney has issued a legal opinion that says the mayor can line-item veto Council member Rory Diamond’s amendments banning city-funded services from benefiting undocumented immigrants; diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; and abortion if they make it into the final city budget.
But the Sept. 10 memo from General Council Michael Fackler to the mayor’s chief of staff, Mike Weinstein, adds, if that happens, the city Charter requires only 10 votes to override a mayoral veto.
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The written opinion was one of six questions Mayor Donna Deegan asked the general counsel leading up to City Council’s final approval Sept. 23 of next year’s $2 billion general operating fund budget and property tax millage rate
“As we have concluded that the Diamond Amendments are a valid exercise of Council’s budgetary authority, then we must likewise conclude that the Mayor can veto the item,” state the memo, provided to Jacksonville Today on Thursday through a public records request.
“Having concluded that the Mayor can veto the Diamond amendments as an item, we now turn to the question of how many votes are needed to override the item veto. The Charter states that ‘majority vote of the members of the council’ are needed to override the item veto. Thus, ten votes are needed to override the Mayor’s item veto,” it states.
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Deegan, a bipartisan coalition of council members, immigrant rights groups and others have spoken out against what Diamond has dubbed his “Big Beautiful Budget Amendments.”
It’s one wrinkle in what’s been a contentious budget process that has seen the City Council Finance Committee strip and then partly reinstate funding for health care and other soical programs in Deegan’s proposed budget.
Diamond argues that the amendments align the city with state law and are part of the council’s fiscal oversight responsibility.
There also has been public sparring between some Republican council members and Deegan over the Finance Committee’s proposed cut to the city’s property tax millage rate.
The Charter gives Deegan authority to veto line items in the budget. But in the five-page memo, Flacker told the Deegan administration that the mayor cannot veto the full budget or the millage rate approved by council, according to his office’s interpretation of the Charter, Florida statute and case law together.
Veto outcome unclear
After the City Council voted 12-6 to remove the Diamond amendments Tuesday night, he vowed to reintroduce the funding prohibitions Sept. 23 during the final debate over the budget.
The motion by council member Ju’Coby Pittman to strip Diamond’s amendment language had failed earlier in the evening and passed only after council members Raul Arias, Randy White, Will Lahnen and Ron Salem flipped their original “no” votes to break a stalemate on the full budget and end what was a seven-hour meeting and a walkout by four Democrat lawmakers.
Republican council member Chris Miller was absent Tuesday night. Miller could have acted as a tie breaker on the tentative budget approval.
That makes an unclear path forward for council members in opposition to Diamond’s DEI, abortion and undocumented immigrant funding ban, and calls into question if they will have enough votes to prevent them from being put back into the budget to prevent a veto override.
“The City Council’s own auditors have repeatedly stated that the budget does not include any spending in the categories that Councilman Diamond is so concerned with,” a spokesperson from the mayor’s office told Jacksonville Today. “The only purpose these unnecessary amendments seem to serve is creating division and gridlock.”
One of the three “Big Beautiful Budget Amendments” mirrors Diamond’s Ordinance 2025-0138, which Deegan vetoed in June. The bill would have blocked public funding from aiding undocumented immigrants and required the mayor’s office and city grant recipients to show proof of that.
Council approved that bill 11-7 but failed to get a two-thirds majority needed to override the veto in an 8-7 vote. That override vote also was taken with council members absent who had supported the original bill — Arias, Joe Carlucci and Terrance Freeman. Ken Amaro, who was opposed to the measure, also was gone for the veto override vote.
If Deegan vetoes Diamond’s amendments, the bar to keep them in the budget will be lower than in a standard resolution or ordinance.
Fackler’s memo points to Section 6.05 of Jacksonville’s city code, which states that any item in the consolidated budget appropriation requires only a majority vote of the members to override the mayor’s veto and adopt the provision. That differs from an ordinance or resolution that requires a two-thirds majority to overcome a veto.
At least two council members, Freeman and Mike Gay, abstained from voting on the tentative budget Tuesday because of possible contract work their companies do with the city.
But the general counsel opinion says a veto override vote is confined to singular line items. That means Republican Freeman and council member Mike Gay would likely not be precluded in a vote to override a veto on a budget line item.
When council members were debating member Pittman’s motion to remove the amendments Tuesday, Diamond warned and almost welcomed a stalemate that could result in the state government stepping in to the city’s budget process.
“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 Tuesday night. “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,” Diamond said.
The city attorney also determined that Diamond’s amendments are allowed in the budget. The opinion says they are similar to other policy amendments in the budget bill — like prohibiting city employees from receiving an auto allowance and city gas card — and address how the city will spend funds, so they can be included.
Because Diamond’s earlier undocumented immigrant funding bill was vetoed, council rules would not allow the same bill to be reintroduced for one year without what’s determined as substantial change.
Fackler’s opinion says while the amendment would be in effect only for the 2025-26 budget year, City Council President Kevin Carrico’s interpretation that it marks a substantial change is “reasonable.”
That aligns with Diamond’s viewpoint, which he told Jacksonville Today in August.
“It’s not the same bill. It’s in the budget, so it doesn’t count as the same bill,” Diamond said Aug. 26. “It also applies to all spending in the city and not just certain grant areas, so it’s materially different.”
