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By Nate Monroe \/ The Flroida Trib | Newly released text messages offer an unusual, but incomplete, view into a series of unguarded conversations between Jacksonville City Council President Kevin Carrico and a raft of his political allies, friends and colleagues.<\/p>\n
Together, they show Carrico, a Republican, to be an enthusiastic political operator \u2014 joking, for example, about booting an ally of the city\u2019s Democratic mayor from a committee assignment. They also show him repeatedly discussing public business with a tone that is at times flippant, at others cryptic and at turns remarkably direct. \u201cNeed this permit closed out bro,\u201d he told one city zoning staffer in an undated message. \u201c\u2026 it\u2019s a favor to church for (former Jacksonville mayor) Lenny Curry.\u201d<\/p>\n
The manner of the text messages\u2019 release is itself the subject of scrutiny, with a City Council staffer and former General Counsel at first saying that every record requested by local news organizations was provided, but later refusing a Florida Trib reporter access to inspect the files, acknowledging that they contained information that was withheld.<\/p>\n
The texts were part of a batch of records Carrico had to turn over in response to a subpoena from State Attorney Melissa Nelson\u2019s office to the council\u2019s secretary, Jason Teal. The Florida Trib and a coalition of Jacksonville media organizations fought for the release of those records, which city council staffers\u00a0initially said would cost nearly $4,000<\/a>.<\/p>\n The\u00a0State Attorney investigation<\/a>\u00a0is related to a winding controversy swirling around Carrico and the city\u2019s publicly owned electric, water and sewer utility, JEA. Nelson\u2019s office has declined to comment on any of the several subpoenas that the Trib and its news partner, News4Jax, have\u00a0discovered in public records<\/a>.<\/p>\n Council staff eventually reduced the cost of the subpoena records, but allowed Carrico to withhold some of the documents. The texts, for example, have often been stripped of context, and in several places the records have been visibly obscured.<\/p>\n When a Florida Trib reporter requested to inspect the original records in person, Teal then denied her, saying that the original records contained information that had been held back from the media.<\/p>\n Source:<\/p>\n