JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The race to pick new leadership on the Jacksonville City Council officially began Tuesday, and all eyes are on the slate of candidates running to become the next Vice President.<\/p>\n
Current Council Vice President Nick Howland secured 16 commitments, which is more than enough to become the next Council President.<\/p>\n
But there are four members duking it out to take the VP spot, and it appears to be an open race.<\/p>\n
The position is important because the Vice President is generally teed up to become the Council President the following year.<\/p>\n
Councilmember Rahman Johnson (D-District 14), Ken Amaro (R-District 1), Chris Miller (R-Group 5 At-Large), and Joe Carlucci (R-District 5) are all vying to become the next Council Vice President.<\/p>\n
Carlucci is in a unique situation, despite receiving the most pledges of any VP candidate on day one.<\/p>\n
Because Carlucci\u2019s father also serves on the city council, the state\u2019s anti-nepotism laws prohibit him from being selected for a leadership position.<\/p>\n
Action News Jax told you last month<\/a> that the city council hired an outside attorney to try and convince the Florida Commission on Ethics to reverse its stance on the nepotism issue.<\/p>\n But last week, the case was voluntarily dropped before a final ruling was made.<\/p>\n The rationale was tied to a carveout<\/a> tagged onto an ethics bill<\/a> in the Florida Senate that would allow Carlucci to run.<\/p>\n But that bill had still has not fully cleared the state legislature by the time Carlucci announced his candidacy Tuesday.<\/p>\n But Carlucci said he believes there\u2019s plenty of time for it to make it across the finish line and be signed into law before the vote on council leadership is set to take effect.<\/p>\n The bill would immediately take effect after being signed by the Governor.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m confident it will pass, and if it doesn\u2019t, then so be it,\u201d said Carlucci.<\/p>\n Councilmember Amaro made it clear he\u2019s running for Vice President because he wants to see a major change of direction, and suggested the city council has been bogged down with controversy over the past year. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re at a pivotal place in this legislative body where we need to turn the page on negativity. We need to turn the page on the bad headlines. We don\u2019t have to have a Kumbaya every day,\u201d said Amaro. \u201dWe all have our own convictions when it comes to our politics, but our policy should all be moving this city forward.\u201d<\/p>\n At least two council members are currently being investigated, one by the Office of Inspector General<\/a> and the other by the State Attorney\u2019s Office<\/a>.<\/p>\n Council President Kevin Carrico (R-District 4) is among those under investigation related to a text<\/a> in which he indicated he intended to replace a JEA Board member because he owed \u201ca big favor\u201d.<\/p>\n While the likely next Council President secured 16 pledges out of the gate, very few pledges were made for the VP spot.<\/p>\n Most members indicated they\u2019re going to spend some time before coming to their final decision.<\/p>\n The vote to select the next slate of council leaders will occur in late May.<\/p>\n >>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The race to pick new leadership on the Jacksonville City Council officially began Tuesday, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[982,18624,33597,17532,28,72899,5052,969,1130,116,118,117,18638,971,44780,10417,501,72898,61807,77115,87555,634,87553,5242,87554,4214,914,976],"class_list":{"0":"post-187395","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-action_news","9":"tag-carlucci","10":"tag-chris_miller","11":"tag-democrat","12":"tag-florida","13":"tag-florida_commission_on_ethics","14":"tag-house","15":"tag-jack","16":"tag-jackson","17":"tag-jacksonville","18":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","19":"tag-jacksonville-news","20":"tag-jacksonville_city_council","21":"tag-jake","22":"tag-jake_s_stan","23":"tag-jake_stowan","24":"tag-jea","25":"tag-joe_carlucci","26":"tag-ken_amaro","27":"tag-kevin_carico","28":"tag-kumbaya","29":"tag-local","30":"tag-nick_hallen","31":"tag-president","32":"tag-rahmon_johnson","33":"tag-senate","34":"tag-state","35":"tag-vice_president"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187395","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=187395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}