Jacksonville council members reverse course on hiring and firing DIA chief

Two city lawmakers are backtracking on their push to give City Council the authority to confirm and terminate the CEO of Jacksonville’s Downtown Investment Authority. 

Miramar Republican council member Joe Carlucci introduced an amendment Monday that strikes the confirmation and elimination language from legislation he co-introduced with incoming council President Kevin Carrico.

Carlucci’s action was a response to concern from DIA officials and other council members that changing the hiring process a week before the agency’s board is scheduled to interview three finalists for the CEO job could cause the candidates to think twice about the hiring process.

Carrico, who says Downtown will be one of his key issues over the next year, told Jacksonville Today that he supports the amendment. 

The council’s Rules and Neighborhoods, Community Service and Public Health and Safety committees advanced the bill unanimously Monday with the changes.

“I think it is important for us, as they’re going through the processes of interviewing, to have a fair understanding by the candidates as to what role they’re going to have to play or what responsibility they’re going to have,” council member Michael Boylan said during the Neighborhoods Committee meeting.

Matt Carlucci, an at-large Republican council member, and Downtown council member Jimmy Peluso, a Democrat, were first to publicly speak out about changing the hiring practice May 29 in a meeting of the Special Committee on the Future of Downtown.

Matt Carlucci called the provision “a bad move.” 

“You don’t want someone applying for a job that a City Council, a political body, can just maybe get upset over an issue, and then gang up on them. That’s just not right; it’s wrong,” he said. 

Since the DIA was established in 2012 during Mayor Alivn Brown’s administration, its CEO was selected and hired by the agency’s mayoral and council-appointed board.

Current DIA CEO Lori Boyer, who will retire in June, says the agency supports the remaining provisions in the reform package but would “very much appreciate” the change before the interviews begin June 9.

The DIA announced Monday that it would hold public interviews of the three finalists from 10 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. June 9 in the Henry Cook Room at City Hall in Downtown Jacksonville. 

According to resumes of the candidates provided by Phil Perry, city chief communications officer, the DIA board are interviewing three out-of-state candidates: Danny Chavez, former chief economic development officer for the city of Waco, Texas; Lara Fritts, division director in the Department of Economic Opportunity for Frederick County, Maryland; and Colin Tarbert, Baltimore Development Corp. president and CEO.

An ‘emergency’ and other reforms

Council committees have fast-tracked the reform bill as an emergency, and it could see a final vote by the full council on June 12.

The speed that the bill is moving through council caused tensions to boil last week during the Downtown special committee meeting between Matt Carlucci and his fellow Republican Carrico. 

During debate last week, Carlucci was not satisfied by Carrico’s justification to move the bill as an emergency. Carrico said the bill needed to go through quickly because the special committee had been working on the reforms all year and they wanted to bill to see a vote before the end of the council year on June 30.

The back-and-forth led to Carrico calling for the council sergeant at arms to come up to the council dais. “I feel threatened by Mr. Carlucci,” Carrico said.

Matt Carlucci thanked Carrico at Monday’s Rules Committee meeting for support the amendment to remove the CEO conformation and termination language.

Peluso referenced the incident during the Neighborhoods committee Monday and also questioned the need for an emergency, arguing the amendemnt would be enough to put CEO candidates’ concerns at ease.

“Right now we can tell all those applicants we have a bill moving through. It’s going through the normal process. That’s perfectly fine,” Peluso said.

”Let’s be very clear about what’s happening when it comes to this bill and when it comes to the special committee. One of our colleagues was heavily disrespected, and it’s either we stand up for the processes that we’ve installed in our council rules and in the processes in which we make sure a bill is right for being an emergency or is not,” he said. “I don’t believe that this meets this criteria.” 

The bill, Ordinance 2025-0395, also reforms the way the city agency offers taxpayer incentives to private developers and asks for public financing on Downtown redevelopment projects. 

Carrico says the bill is about efficiency, giving the DIA more autonomy, and speeding up the Downtown incentive award process.

It would allow the agency to bypass the Mayor’s Budget Review Committee and submit legislation on incentive deals it negotiates with private real estate developers directly with council. 

Currently, the DIA CEO has to get approval from the mayor’s office to file bills with council. 

If approved, the bill would reduce the amount of incentive dollars the DIA board can issue for a single project without council approval from $18 million to $10 million. But by exempting high-dollar property tax rebates from that number, known as Recapture Enhanced Value Grants which would still go before council, Carrico says it would allow the agency board to independently approve more incentive deals

The $10 million cash incentive cap pulls money from the Downtown tax increment financing district, which DIA manages, not from the city’s general fund.

An effort by Peluso to increase the cap to $15 million failed. He said the higher dollar amount could help the DIA board get larger projects expected to need city investment, including the redevelopment of the former JEA tower on Church Street and a possible new deal for the former Furchgott’s Department Store, off the ground.