Nate Monroe: Council finance committee sneaks more money for special interests in budget

COMMENTARY | Near the end of a six-hour meeting last month, the Jacksonville City Council's finance committee agreed to dip into the city's operating reserves to pay for a $300,000 grant for a farm project run by Clara White Mission — whose CEO and president is City Council and finance committee member Ju'Coby Pittman — and up to $1.4 million to help a charter school founded by a prominent Republican donor build a gym.

There was no indication prior to the meeting the finance committee was set to consider that largesse. The payouts were not part of a list of budget "enhancements" the group was weighing that day nor were they included on any other handouts made publicly available before or during the meeting, even though committee members were circulating draft copies of a term sheet for the charter school payment while they were discussing it in real time.

If approved by the full council later this month, nonprofits run by two members of the finance committee will be set to benefit from budget additions the committee itself made. That includes Pittman's Clara White as well as finance Chairman Nick Howland's organization, the Fire Watch Project, which I previously reported is set to benefit from a $90,000 grant the committee also included in Mayor Donna Deegan's proposed budget. The vast majority of nonprofits in the city must compete for funding through a public-service grants process. The direct award for Clara White and the separate grant that will benefit the Fire Watch Project will require council members to waive a rule requiring competition as a condition for city funding, and both Howland and Pittman have had to recuse themselves from the votes and discussion about them.

City Council member Kevin Carrico, a former vice president at Clara White, proposed the $300,000 for the nonprofit's White Harvest Farms expansion project — which has already gotten $1.7 million in city funding after cost overruns and blown deadlines — as well as another $1.4 million potential grant for Jacksonville Classical Academy, a charter school founded by influential Republican donor John Rood that is part of an educational network on the vanguard of conservative efforts to change public education in Florida. The school has been a favored speaking venue of Republican elected officials in Jacksonville and across the state and is affiliated with a management company run by conservative education activist Erika Donalds, who is also the wife of U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, a Republican representing a deeply conservative district in Southwest Florida.

Carrico offered no explanation for the Clara White funding, which had become a source of concern by some of his former colleagues. Last year, Clara White asked for $200,000 on top of $1.5 million in aid city hall had already provided to help complete the behind-schedule White Harvest Farms expansion project, prompting questions from members of that former finance committee. "This is one I look back on that, had I known everything that was going to happen, would I have voted for it the same way when we initially did — I'll leave that as a mystery," deadpanned then-City Council member and finance Chairman Aaron Bowman.

But the city ultimately approved that money despite those questions and without any apparent concern over a 2021 controversy at Clara White during which five of the nonprofit's six executive board members unexpectedly resigned and accused Pittman of mismanaging the long-standing organization. The council has never discussed that episode or indicated it weighed on their decision to continue providing Clara White financial support.

Carrico's proposed $300,000 is intended to help Pittman's Clara White set up a vocational program at the farm, an apparent expansion of the city's previous role, which had been limited to helping the farm project get off the ground. Neither the documents posted publicly before the recent finance meeting nor additional documents received from a public-records request shed any light on who asked Carrico for this grant. Clara White also typically applies for competitive funding each year and usually gets most if not all of what it asks for, so it's possible the nonprofit will actually receive city money above and beyond the $300,000 for the farms project, which would total far more than what most local nonprofits get (Clara White got $150,000 from that competitive grants process in the current fiscal year).

For the charter school funding, Carrico simply invited the school's lobbyist up to the podium to justify the award. The grant is intended to help the school clean up a portion of its campus — the site of a former ash incinerator which it purchased from the city in 2018 — so it can build a gym. Steve Diebenow, the school's lobbyist, told council members the bulk of that work would be paid for by the Vestcor Family Foundation, the charitable arm of the development firm Rood founded in 1983.

But the request raised red flags with Mike Weinstein, the city's interim chief financial officer, who warned the finance committee it was "sort of out of our lane here doing business this way." The city, Weinstein said, had "a lot of work" before it could be comfortable with the scope and true cost of the project and fully clear about whose responsibility that work belongs to. The City Council Auditor and the Office of General Counsel had also not vetted the proposed aid, but most finance committee members were unfazed and said the diligence could be done in time for a final vote on the money later this month by the full City Council.

It's not clear why the school couldn't use the proceeds of a newly enacted sales tax, of which charters get a cut, to pay for the work — particularly since that revenue was intended to help Duval County's public schools build better infrastructure for students. Asked at the meeting, Diebenow had no details about how Jacksonville Classical Academy was using the sales tax money.

Another quirk: The council member who represents the district, Jimmy Peluso, asked the committee to table the request until further details could be hashed out, but the finance committee discarded the deference usually shown toward the wishes of district members on funding issues within their council boundaries.

Pittman, of Clara White, emerged as a champion of the charter school funding. "This is an opportunity to make good on something that we are responsible for," she told her colleagues on the finance committee.

Pittman, a Democrat, might seem an odd champion for a school so tied into a conservative policy project, but she has recently come under fire for displaying what her critics believe to be a kind of unseemly transactional politics. Pittman infuriated some demonstrators when she rebuked an audience of mourners who loudly booed Gov. Ron DeSantis at a prayer vigil for the victims of the racist murders at a Dollar General last month. "If the governor wanted to come here and he's bringing gifts to my community, y'all know I'm taking the gifts," she told the crowd.

The next day, during a large rally in James Weldon Johnson Park against white supremacy, some protesters made sharply critical references to Pittman.

"You dancing for money. You dancing for other things," one speaker said. "If that is your purpose, I need you to go back to your little cushy office across the street (in city hall)."

The two funding requests, which are coming out of the city's operating reserves, also create an awkward juxtaposition for a finance committee that slashed $232,000 for one of the mayor's priorities — a diversity, equity and inclusion officer — citing fiscal prudence. "We have a role to the taxpayers to spend their money wisely," Howland said at the time. "We have a role to be fiscally responsible. So when we saw redundancy, we eliminated redundancy."

That position is one its advocates have said is particularly needed in light of the racist killings last month, which highlighted the festering white supremacy movement in Northeast Florida and a local atmosphere in which some Black residents no longer feel safe. This week, the Deegan administration indicated it planned to take the fight over the DEI position to the full council. “Now is the time for Jacksonville to join the ranks of our peer cities and Corporate America who find value in a chief diversity officer," Deegan said in a statement this week. "This unifying force is especially important in the wake of the horrific, racist mass shooting we recently experienced."

Nate Monroe is a metro columnist whose work regularly appears every Thursday and Sunday. Follow him on Twitter @NateMonroeTU.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Nate Monroe: Council sneaks more money for special interests in budget