that racism, a toxic work culture, and other leadership problems at JEA are tied to CEO Vickie Cavey.<\/a><\/p>\nCurry pointed to a moment during the news conference when Deegan described the allegations as a pressure campaign, and Cavey appeared to dispute that characterization.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut in a live press conference, she was basically called a liar by the CEO of JEA. And she doubled down on it when Donna made these accusations,\u201d Curry said. \u201cVicki, the CEO of the utility, said, with all due respect, Mayor, that never happened. And then she made some weird comment about the devil. Donna did. And Vickie said that didn\u2019t happen, essentially saying, Mayor, that\u2019s not true.\u201d<\/p>\n
During that news conference, Deegan defended Cavey and called the allegations a smear campaign, a politically motivated power grab and a pressure campaign. Deegan also said the allegations \u201cmagically appeared\u201d from the same people she described as part of a toxic political culture.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would not call it a pressure campaign. I would say maybe we should, but a determination was already given,\u201d the mayor said. <\/p>\n
Curry also pushed back on public reporting that tied him or his firm to efforts around JEA\u2019s leadership. <\/p>\n
\u201cAllegations that I was somehow involved with what\u2019s happening at JEA, the future of this current CEO. I was completely unaware of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Curry also commented on a separate controversy involving Carrico, who publicly discussed nominating his boss at the Boys and Girls Club to a JEA board seat. <\/p>\n
That nominee later withdrew from consideration.<\/p>\n
\u201cI learned about that text message literally through media reports,\u201d the former mayor said. \u201c[Carrico] and I haven\u2019t discussed it. Certainly, the text message is not a good look. But you do appoint people to boards that you know and that you think are competent and capable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Curry said he is confident JEA will continue to operate amid the controversy but that he will not attend the JEA board meeting scheduled for Tuesday, when much of the discussion is expected to continue.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 Former Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry pushed back Monday against a news conference that saw Mayor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[5890,116,118,117,501,4116],"class_list":{"0":"post-166729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-donna-deegan","9":"tag-jacksonville","10":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","11":"tag-jacksonville-news","12":"tag-jea","13":"tag-lenny-curry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166729","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=166729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}