JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — JEA’s former Chief of Staff Kurt Wilson and Mayor Donna Deegan’s Chief Administrative Officer Mike Weinstein are trading barbs over JEA’s decision to contract with Ballard Partners - the powerful local lobbying firm that employs former Mayor Lenny Curry and his former Chief of Staff Jordan Elsbury.
JEA has claimed Wilson was solely responsible for scoring and awarding the lobbying contract.
But Weinstein told Action News Jax on Tuesday that during his conversations with Wilson at the time of the selection process, Wilson misrepresented to him that multiple people were involved in scoring the bids.
“Well, with one person scoring, it comes out the way that one person wanted. I mean, that’s why you have multiple scorers,” said Weinstein.
While providing testimony under oath to the JEA Special Investigatory Committee on Monday, Wilson claimed the decision to award Ballard the contract came down to price, not politics.
“Lenny Curry is not our lobbyist; he was not on the RFP, we don’t engage Lenny on our business, and I said, don’t put politics in procurement,” said Wilson.
Wilson also testified that JEA CEO Vickie Cavey told him on multiple occasions she’d been pressured by Mayor Deegan to sever ties with Ballard due to its connections with the past administration.
“Every time she had coffee with the mayor or she would meet with the mayor, it was always a point of contention,” said Wilson. ”She would come back and be like, hey, she’s still upset with me. You know, I wish we would have never signed the contract.”
Ultimately, JEA chose not to renew with Ballard and the contract expired at the end of January.
Weinstein suggested it was the termination of that contract that spurred everything from the Council President’s effort to replace a JEA board member as a “big favor” for a friend, to the following hostile workplace accusations, to the public disclosure of a decades-long issue related to the utility’s failure to charge large commercial customers additional capacity fees.
“It wouldn’t be far-fetched to think that basically a lot of the same people that were involved in the original takeover of JEA could very well be involved in this particular effort to take over JEA,” said Weinstein. ”It’s about money and power.”
When asked whether the mayor pressured Cavey to sever ties with Ballard, Weinstein suggested Wilson’s claims are “useless”, as Wilson was quoting what Cavey allegedly told him she was allegedly told by the mayor.
He added, “JEA is very independent”.
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