Whatever histories of Jacksonville are written (if any) won\u2019t focus too much on whoever leads the City Council in a given year, and that\u2019s likely a good thing for outgoing President Kevin Carrico after 12 months best forgotten.<\/p>\n
Carrico has spent the last year undercutting the authority of the office, in what was a prolonged in-kind contribution to the Donna Deegan re-election campaign.<\/p>\n
His recently released texts<\/a> around his attempt to put his boss at the Boys and Girls Club on the JEA board are basically the cellophane wrap on the pungent, unpalatable sandwich that was his year atop the legislative branch.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t so much what he said in the texts \u2013 politics is full of morally ambiguous people who wear their corruption like a second skin.<\/p>\n It was the fact that knowing that these would be public record, he committed to these statements anyway.<\/p>\n From saying that he needed a board member to jump off because he owed a \u201cbig favor\u201d to \u201ca friend,\u201d to talking about how he wasted Deegan ally Jimmy Peluso\u2019s<\/a> last year by removing him from his \u201cone committee,\u201d Carrico managed to expose the business of the legislative branch.<\/p>\n He also revealed that the fathers of consolidation were wise to envision a strong mayor, in part because incidents like this show that when people advance beyond their natural ability, their learning curve comes at the expense of the city itself.<\/p>\n Beyond that, Carrico\u2019s questionable choice to lead the Finance Committee, Raul Arias, shouldn\u2019t be forgotten.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear what Arias<\/a>\u2019 qualification for that was beyond being willing to get in the \u201cfoxhole<\/a>\u201d with the council president, but between his family\u2019s company getting $35,000 to cater Carrico\u2019s installation and trying to steer a media contract to a company he once owned in correlation with a city grant, the red flags abounded.\u00a0<\/p>\n This week, Nick Howland gets sworn into the president role.<\/p>\n His work is cut out for him.<\/p>\n Because of the way Carrico squandered the moral authority of the office, Howland isn\u2019t going to be able to hold council up as a bulwark against the mayor\u2019s office in this election year the way some Republicans \u2013 particularly candidates and consultants \u2013 might have hoped.<\/p>\n Scrutiny will also surround committee assignments.<\/p>\n Howland will be compelled to shake things up some and give some other people a chance to serve in prominent roles. At-large member Matt Carlucci, who is on his last year on the council, has been wasted in recent years and, like Peluso, had one committee also.\u00a0<\/p>\n The reality of politics in this city, one closely divided in terms of registration between Republicans and Democrats, is that coalitions form here across party lines.<\/p>\n That\u2019s different from Tallahassee, where a conservative Democrat like Kim Daniels has often been attacked by her caucus for ideological divergence.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s certainly different from D.C., where it takes a lot for Rs and Ds to deviate from their caucus.\u00a0<\/p>\n The pretense that has prevailed locally more and more of late has been that, like Carrico tried to, it\u2019s important to shore up the party from the dais, because that\u2019s the way to ensure a perpetual political career of increasing prominence.<\/p>\n