JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 There\u2019s a call for Jacksonville City Council President Kevin Carrico to temporarily step down from his leadership post.<\/p>\n
City Council member Jimmy Peluso made that statement during an interview with Action News Jax\u2019s Ben Becker on Thursday morning in the wake of Carrico receiving a subpoena<\/a>.<\/p>\n >>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that the State Attorney\u2019s Office is even looking into this shows how serious this is. I think that\u2019s why I\u2019m doing the actions I\u2019m doing. Because we should take this seriously and we should all be holding each other accountable,\u201d Peluso said.<\/p>\n Peluso also put his request in writing to Carrico:<\/p>\n Becker was the first to break the story<\/a> on text messages sent by Carrico that led to the investigation.<\/p>\n Peluso said Carrico should step down just until the State Attorney\u2019s Office determines if there was any wrongdoing or not, with the texts Carrico sent. <\/p>\n Carrico bluntly responded to Peluso\u2019s call to temporarily step down:<\/p>\n \u201cThis is nothing more than political theater from the biggest Drama Queen on the City Council. My office is fully complying with the State Attorney\u2019s requests and will continue to do so. While Mr. Peluso chases relevance, he has established himself as the least effective member of this Council and has neglected his district for most of his term.\u201c<\/p>\n We obtained the subpoena sent to Carrico. The SAO is requesting all electronic communications from January 1 to February 24 between Carrico and a number of people. It includes any mentions of board appointments or JEA\u2019s CEO.<\/p>\n We told you last week that Carrico texted JEA board member Arthur Adams regarding his board seat on February 5.<\/p>\n In the text, Carrico wrote to Adams, \u201cI owed a big favor to a friend and opted to put him on the JEA board as your term is expiring.\u201d He went on to say, \u201cNot sure if you wanted to stay, but I needed to do this for my guy.\u201d<\/p>\n Carrico wanted to put Paul Martinez<\/a>, his boss at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida, on the JEA board. Martinez has since removed himself from consideration<\/a> for that appointment.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n After we reported on the text messages, Carrico accused JEA CEO Vickie Cavey of racism<\/a> and creating a toxic culture at the utility.<\/p>\n Mayor Donna Deegan\u2019s office called the comments about Cavey a smear campaign<\/a>. JEA\u2019s board gave Cavey a vote of confidence<\/a> on Tuesday and did not discuss the Carrico text controversy.<\/p>\n We asked the 18 other City Council members for comment<\/a>, but only four (including Peluso) responded. All four were critical of or troubled by the words Carrico used, including Council member Matt Carlucci.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s a black eye. It\u2019s a black eye and another black eye for the JEA, and it\u2019s another black eye for the Council. And we just need to get out of the drama, you know? There\u2019s just too much drama,\u201d Carlucci said.<\/p>\n Carrico said the following Wednesday evening about the subpoena:<\/p>\n \u201cOur office fully complies with and respects all records requests. We are cooperating and will respond to any additional requests as needed.\u201d<\/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 There\u2019s a call for Jacksonville City Council President Kevin Carrico to temporarily step down from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[643,5228,24475,77116,77119,72906,81064,81062,81065,77128,81067,116,118,117,501,18639,81063,77115,81066,41463,634,77130,18614,77118,81061,5242,77829],"class_list":{"0":"post-170444","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-action_news_jack","9":"tag-action_news_jacks","10":"tag-adams","11":"tag-arthur_adams","12":"tag-carico","13":"tag-cario","14":"tag-cavey","15":"tag-crio","16":"tag-cro","17":"tag-gea","18":"tag-jack-com","19":"tag-jacksonville","20":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","21":"tag-jacksonville-news","22":"tag-jea","23":"tag-jimmy_peluso","24":"tag-kero","25":"tag-kevin_carico","26":"tag-kevin_kerrico","27":"tag-ko","28":"tag-local","29":"tag-martinez","30":"tag-matt_carlucci","31":"tag-paul_martinez","32":"tag-peloso","33":"tag-president","34":"tag-vicky_cavey"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170444","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=170444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}