An appointment to a JEA board seat that stirred accusations of backroom dealing ended before City Council took it up for a vote and leaves undetermined at this stage who will serve on the board that determines what JEA customers pay for electricity and water.
Boys & Girls Club of Northeast Florida CEO Paul Martinez pulled out of consideration for the JEA board after City Council President Kevin Carrico faced backlash for writing a text message that said he was appointing Martinez as “a big favor to a friend.”
Carrico did not say why he owed the “big favor” and declined repeatedly to elaborate when asked about it.
Carrico, who works with Martinez as a top executive at the Boys & Girls Clubs, did not immediately say who he would appoint to the JEA board in wake of Martinez’s withdrawal.
Martinez said Feb. 18 he wants to concentrate on leading the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida that serves about 18,000 youth and is one of the five largest in the nation.
“After thoughtful consideration, I have decided not to pursue appointment to the JEA board as my priority remains the strength and stability of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida,” Martinez said. “While I am disappointed that I will not be able to serve the city of Jacksonville in this additional capacity, I remain fully committed to leading this organization with integrity and focus.”
He said that “in light of the public discussion” over Carrico nominating him to the JEA board, he wanted to make clear that compensation for executives at the Boys & Girls Club is set by the organization’s independent board of directors in line with “national nonprofit benchmarks and organizational performance.”
Carrico said he respects Martinez’s decision.
“His leadership of one of the top-performing Boys & Girls Clubs organizations in the nation — serving 18,000 local children annually across 59 locations — speaks for itself,” Carrico said. “It’s unfortunate that political noise and unfair attacks sought to distract from a lifetime of service but our our community continues to benefit from his leadership and commitment.”
Martinez’s withdrawal averts what would have been a contentious confirmation by City Council because of a text message Carrico sent to current JEA board member Arthur Adams, whose term expires at the end of the month.
“What up bro …. hey I owed a big favor to a friend and opted to put him on the JEA Board as your term is expiring,” Carrico wrote in a Feb. 5 text message first reported by Action News. “Not sure if you wanted to stay but I needed to do this for my guy. Tab is on me when we linked up next.”
“My plan was to stay,” Adams wrote back to Carrico.
City Council member Jimmy Peluso, who had blasted the text message as “corruption at it finest,” said he was “glad to see common sense prevailed” after Martinez withdrew.
“However, it’s clear that we still have good old boy activities happening on the fourth floor,” he said in reference to City Council offices at City Hall. “We need a major change in City Council and sweep out the leadership who has enabled this behavior.”
After a former JEA board launched failed sales attempt of the utility in 2019, Duval County voters agreed in 2020 the City Council president would appoint four of seven JEA board members. The mayor, who previously appointed all seven board members, appoints the other three members. City Council has the final say on all the appointments to the unpaid board positions.
Then-council president Randy White appointed Adams in November 2024 to a partial term. With that term for Adams coming to an end, the decision appointing someone to a full four-year term fell to Carrico.
He chose Martinez, who has been CEO and president of the local Boys and Girls Clubs since 2014. Carrico joined the non-profit organization a couple of years later and has risen to become vice president of strategic initiatives.
After the news report on the text message sent by Carrico to Adams, NAACP branch President Isaiah Rumlin wrote a Feb. 17 letter that called the text message “deeply troubling and fundamentally incompatible with the ethical obligations of public office.”
“The post-2020 safeguards for JEA’s governance were explicitly designed to prevent backroom dealing and restore public trust after a period of scandal and instability,” Rumlin wrote to Carrico. “Your text messages suggests those safeguards are being treated as a technicality rather than a binding mandate for transparent, merit-based appointments in the public interest.”
If Martinez had remained the appointee, the Rules Committee of City Council would have voted on him next week followed by the full council on Feb. 24.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Furor over ‘big favor’ text sinks council president’s pick for JEA
Reporting by David Bauerlein, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
