JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The Jacksonville Transportation Authority reported a nearly $9 million deficit in late December, according to a newly released council auditors\u2019 report.<\/p>\n
Action News Jax reporter Yona Gavino has been following JTA\u2019s finances and asked the city auditor how this happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis latest audit follows my last report on this in January, showing JTA was nearly $19 million over budget last year,\u201d Yona Gavino said.<\/p>\n
Last year\u2019s overspending by JTA was driven by costs that included $10 million for its Connexion service and $7 million for its autonomous shuttle program. But revenue concerns don\u2019t stop there.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n In the first quarter of fiscal 2026, JTA is showing an overall deficit of nearly $9 million, with the bus division already $9.2 million in the hole.<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t surprise me at all,\u201d one woman said.<\/p>\n JTA says it will end the year on budget, but auditors point to a potential problem with the math. The agency is banking on sales and gas tax revenue to come in exactly as planned, but initial projections show those collections might fall short, according to the council auditor\u2019s report.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t care. It doesn\u2019t bother me,\u201d a local resident who does not ride JTA said.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just revenue\u2014expenditures are climbing, too. Auditors say programs like Connexion Plus, JTA\u2019s service for the elderly and disabled, were significantly under-budgeted.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a hit or miss. Just depended how they were running that day. It was not always consistent,\u201d a resident who has used JTA services in the past, said.<\/p>\n Add in unexpected health insurance hikes for staff and lower fare revenue from a new pilot program, and the deficit grows.<\/p>\n JTA is now working on a budget amendment to address the gap, but the auditor says it\u2019s still unclear how they\u2019ll fix it.<\/p>\n In a statement, the city auditor said in part: \u201cWhile JTA projects that they will be on budget for the \u00bd cent transportation tax and gas taxes, our first quarter projections indicate they may come in lower than budget. However, this is only a portion of potential budgetary issues and it really is too soon to tell from just one quarter.\u201d<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The Jacksonville Transportation Authority reported a nearly $9 million deficit in late December, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[344,347,28,348,116,351,118,117,799,78032,78035,62826,78034,78031,78033,349,350,346,345],"class_list":{"0":"post-163191","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-action-news-jax","9":"tag-cbs47","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-fox30","12":"tag-jacksonville","13":"tag-jacksonville-fl","14":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","15":"tag-jacksonville-news","16":"tag-jta","17":"tag-jta-budget","18":"tag-jta-connection-plus","19":"tag-jta-connexion-plus","20":"tag-jta-costs","21":"tag-jta-expenditure","22":"tag-jta-overspending","23":"tag-northeast-florida","24":"tag-southeast-georgia","25":"tag-wfox","26":"tag-wjax"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}