Daytona Beach City Manager Deric Feacher and Mayor Derrick Henry listened Nov. 5 as city commissioners discussed the city's use of payment cards for employees making smaller purchases that don't require city commissioner approvals.
Daytona Beach City Manager Deric Feacher and Mayor Derrick Henry listened Nov. 5 as city commissioners discussed the city's use of payment cards for employees making smaller purchases that don't require city commissioner approvals.
Home » News » National News » Florida » Extensive subpoena for Daytona records requested by attorney general
Florida

Extensive subpoena for Daytona records requested by attorney general

DAYTONA BEACH — As statewide prosecutors with the Florida Attorney General’s office probe purchases and financial practices of both city government staff members and elected officials, another employee at City Hall has been served with a subpoena seeking information.

On April 29, City Clerk Letitia LaMagna received a subpoena listing the various city documents, records and communications that Assistant Statewide Prosecutor Richard Mantei is working to gather as part of his investigation into the way the city has been handling the local government’s money and financial transactions in recent years.

Video Thumbnail

The subpoena ordered LaMagna, a longtime city employee whose office maintains official city records, to appear before Mantei on May 13 in the Attorney General’s offices on Seabreeze Boulevard.

But the order also gives LaMagna the options of delivering the records by certified mail or email by May 13 if she chooses not to personally deliver the information that will be collected over the next two weeks.

Part of LaMagna’s subpoena is seeking records connected to four city employees and three City Commission members: City Manager Deric Feacher; Deputy City Manager Jim Morris; Fire Chief and Deputy City Manager Dru Driscoll; Business Enterprise Management Director Michael Stallworth; Mayor Derrick Henry; City Commissioner Dannette Henry; and City Commissioner Paula Reed.

The subpoena is seeking records, emails and text messages and app-based communications from that group of seven and others from Oct. 1, 2025 through April 23, 2026.

Mantei’s order specifies he’s also seeking a list of all active city purchasing cards including the card number and name of the city employee who has been assigned a purchasing card. Some city commissioners also have city purchase cards.

He’s also looking for the total amount charged to each purchasing card from Oct. 1, 2025 through April 23, 2026.

Exhaustive list of Daytona financial records requested

Since February, state government auditors have been taking an in-depth look at the city’s use of purchasing cards in several different departments as well as other city financial matters. Then a few weeks ago, the state Attorney General’s office also started asking questions.

Driscoll received a subpoena April 17 ordering him to appear before Mantei April 29 in the Seabreeze Boulevard office to provide a sworn statement.

Daytona Beach Fire Department Deputy Chief Jessica Matthews was also was issued a subpoena April 17 commanding her to appear April 29 to provide a sworn statement.

Those two fire department subpoenas came in the wake of a March 27 internal city auditor report that documented expenditures by fire department employees using city purchase cards. Montei is also seeking records related to that report now, as well as a fire department battalion chief who provided the internal city auditor information and was fired effective April 27.

All the subpoenas have been issued under the authority of the Circuit Court.

The subpoena orders LaMagna to “testify truthfully” and deliver an extensive array of records that includes text messages, emails, SMS messages and social media posts. The state prosecutor also asked for meeting recordings, chat logs, call logs, voicemails, metadata, photos, geolocation data and files stored on cloud services.

The subpoena is seeking records both on city government-issued mobile devices and personal devices used to conduct city business.

The subpoena specified that the state prosecutors are looking for “any emails to, from or including drudriscoll@yahoo.com.

The subpoena is also asking LaMagna for requests for proposal records tied to Feacher’s suggestion last year to build an addition to City Hall that would be used mainly by permits and licensing employees. The plan was to pay for the addition with excess permits and license fee revenue that had accumulated well beyond what state law allowed.

Feacher, Morris, the mayor and Chief Building Official Glen Urquhart appeared before the state Joint Legislative Auditing Committee in November to answer legislators’ questions about the excess permits and license fee revenue that climbed above $10 million.

The subpoena is asking for any presentation connected to that tense Joint Legislative Auditing Committee hearing whether the presentation was a draft, preliminary or final.

What other Daytona Beach records are being sought by state for six-year period?

The new subpoena is also asking for records and communications connected to property at 847 Orange Ave, and the purchase of Ford F-250 pickup trucks.

The state investigation is also looking for more information from Jan. 1, 2020 through April 23, 2026.

For that six-year period, the subpoena asks for all documents, bills, receipts, invoices, emails and transaction records related to the purchase or receipt of applications, books or other resources with any portion of the title including the phrases “Engage Us or Enrage Us,” “You are More Than Enough,” “The Math Party,” and “The Reading Party.”

The last request on the subpoena is for documents related to the purchase of any service, resource, book, app or other item from “Step by Step Expressions Inc.” or “themathparty.com.”

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Extensive subpoena for Daytona records requested by attorney general

Reporting by Eileen Zaffiro-Kean, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

Image

Image

Related posts

Leave a Comment