The outgoing leader of the Jacksonville Transportation Authority was selected as the top candidate for a job in Dallas.<\/p>\n
The Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) board of directors named Nat Ford as one of three finalists for its president and CEO position on Friday.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n That move comes one week after Ford announced his intention to resign<\/a> from JTA effective Jan. 8, 2027.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n His contact with the agency wasn’t set to expire until December 2028.<\/p>\n According to a news release from DART<\/a>, a meet and greet was held with Ford and the other two candidates on Saturday.<\/p>\n The DART Board said it will meet on Tuesday at 6 p.m. for its regularly scheduled board meeting and it is expected to vote on a final candidate.<\/p>\n What we uncovered in our ‘Taken for a Ride’ series<\/p>\n Action News Jax has reported on controversies surrounding Ford’s leadership for the past three years in our Taken for a Ride series<\/a>, starting with his base salary.<\/p>\n Action News Jax found Ford’s salary was significantly higher than transportation leaders in much larger cities like New York City and Chicago<\/a>, and was even higher than the salary of the President of the United States.<\/p>\n When his additional benefits are added, it pushes his total compensation above half a million dollars a year.<\/p>\n Our investigations also found Ford amassed major travel bills on the taxpayers’ dime, racking up a nearly $190,000 tab between 2016 and 2023 alone.<\/p>\n Ford also faced significant criticism from Jacksonville’s City Council over the U2C program<\/a>, which is expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>]<\/p>\n Those critiques have largely focused on the NAVI autonomous shuttles, which have already cost the city tens of millions of dollars, still operate with a human in the driver’s seat and have struggled to general substantial ridership<\/a>.<\/p>\n Most recently, JTA went from a budget surplus to facing a $19 million shortfall<\/a>, which resulted in 88 senior leaders being furloughed<\/a> and a 15 percent reduction in Ford’s own salary.<\/p>\n Despite the hardships<\/a>, JTA’s news release announcing Ford’s departure highlighted his successes, like securing $400 million in federal funds and his support of extending the local option gas tax to support regional infrastructure.<\/p>\n What’s next for JTA?<\/p>\n The JTA Board will discuss next steps forward to fill the soon-to-be-vacant CEO position during its next board meeting on July 29.<\/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":"The outgoing leader of the Jacksonville Transportation Authority was selected as the top candidate for a job in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[139399,139397,139398,8580,116,118,117],"class_list":["post-340609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-ceo-position","tag-dallas-area-rapid-transit","tag-dart-board","tag-ford","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340609","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=340609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}