Emails show that Jacksonville’s webmaster described ways to keep government records and meeting recordings online. Ethics officials nevertheless removed links, directed residents toward public-records requests and left unanswered whether that approach represents citywide policy.

Our initial investigation began with disappearing Jacksonville Ethics Commission records. A closer examination of internal correspondence revealed a potentially larger problem: City Hall does not appear to have one clearly communicated policy for balancing ADA compliance with online public access.

The Ethics Office deactivated links to meeting minutes, agendas, annual reports, complaint materials and other public information. It also considered withholding meeting recordings from the website and making them available only through public-records requests.

The records were not necessarily destroyed. They were removed from immediate online access. That distinction is important, but it does not eliminate the consequences. A document that residents could once retrieve immediately may now require a formal request, staff processing, a waiting period and, potentially, payment.

Internal emails also show that city webmaster Lauren Spencer did not recommend a blanket retreat from online access. She described ways to preserve it through captions, transcripts and approved hosting platforms—and specifically recommended consulting Jacksonville’s Technology Solutions Division.

What followed inside the Ethics Office was more restrictive than the guidance Spencer actually provided.

That discrepancy raises questions extending well beyond one commission: Who authorized the removals? Does the Office of General Counsel support them? Did the Mayor’s Office approve them? Could other Jacksonville departments take the same approach?

Jacksonville Ethics Commission Records Were Delinked From Public View

In April 2026, Ethics Program and Training Manager Andrea Myers sent employees a detailed list of changes she said needed to be completed “ASAP” to bring the Ethics Office website into ADA compliance.

Her directions included:

• Deleting Ethics Commission annual reports

• Breaking links to internal operating procedures

• Removing complaint dispositions

• Breaking every link on the meeting-notices, agendas and minutes page

• Removing the “Other Cities” resource page

• Removing the “Resolutions and Orders” page

• Breaking links to disclosures and legislation

• Removing historical reports

• Removing vendor and lobbyist information

• Moving training materials to the city’s internal network

For the meeting-records page, Myers directed staff to “BREAK all of the links.” She said the office would begin with the most recent documents and work backward to determine whether materials could be returned in an accessible format.

Myers also directed staff to add a public-records notice explaining that Jacksonville.gov is not the city’s official system of record, that historical materials are retained offline and that inaccessible documents may not be posted.

That notice now appears on the Ethics Office’s meeting-records page. It says Jacksonville.gov publishes only current materials needed for active public business and directs residents seeking other records to the city’s public-records system.

The page continues to identify many previous meetings, but numerous older entries display words such as “Minutes” or “Audio” without providing active links. That creates the appearance of an archive without delivering the immediate access normally associated with one.

Jacksonville’s Webmaster Said Records Could Remain Online

The internal correspondence becomes especially significant when compared with the actual guidance provided by Spencer.

On June 8, Myers asked whether the Ethics Office should continue posting meeting audio and video. She explained that the office had previously posted recordings but was encountering problems involving file sizes and the city website’s media tools.

Spencer responded on June 10:

She explained that videos generally require captions, audio-only recordings require written transcripts and important visual information may need to be described in words.

Spencer also described how other city departments handled recordings. Instead of uploading large files directly to Jacksonville.gov, some linked to Zoom recordings or published videos through YouTube.

Most importantly, she recommended involving Technology Solutions:

Spencer concluded with an equally important clarification:

That was not an instruction to permanently remove recordings. It was guidance to make them accessible and to ask the city’s technology professionals how best to publish them.

Ethics Officials Turned Accessibility Guidance Into a Removal Policy

Six days later, Myers summarized Spencer’s response differently in an email to Ethics Director Kirby Oberdorfer:

Myers wrote that the website could instead inform residents that a recording existed and require anyone seeking it to submit a public-records request.

She acknowledged another possibility—working with Technology Solutions to place recordings on YouTube—but noted that subtitles and transcripts would still be required.

Oberdorfer responded that her initial inclination was to take the matter to the Ethics Commission because the recordings and website belonged to the Commission.

The difference between the original guidance and the internal summary matters.

Spencer said the office could publish recordings with accessible equivalents and should consult Technology Solutions about an approved method. The Ethics Office’s interpretation effectively converted that guidance into a presumption against posting recordings.

This does not establish intentional misrepresentation. It could reflect staffing shortages, workload pressures, technical confusion or concern about potential liability.

Nevertheless, the practical effect was the same: guidance describing how to preserve public access became the basis for considering a more restrictive request-only system.

Ethics Personnel Said They Had Found a Compliance Method

The correspondence also shows that Ethics Office personnel were developing workable methods for making documents accessible.

At 4:07 p.m. on April 15, Myers wrote:

She then identified the complaint form and complaint procedures as documents still appearing on the website that needed to be replaced with accessible versions.

At 6 p.m. that same day, Myers provided a more precise explanation. She said she had figured out the documents except for Word files containing Ethics Commission headers, which would not read in the correct order.

She then described the workaround she developed:

A subsequent email established a process in which staff would draft and edit meeting minutes in Word, obtain Commission approval and then transfer the final version into the ADA-compliant PowerPoint template. That avoided repeatedly rebuilding the document during the editing process.

The emails do not prove that every historical document in the Ethics Commission archive had already been remediated. They do establish that employees had identified methods for producing compliant forms, procedures and meeting minutes—including a workaround for the document-reading-order problem.

On April 22, Myers also wrote that “audio should be good to go as is.” In June, the city webmaster explained that recordings could remain online if accompanied by captions or transcripts and recommended consulting Technology Solutions about an approved hosting method.

Taken together, the correspondence shows that Jacksonville did not face a simple choice between violating accessibility requirements and removing public information. Employees were already developing compliant documents, and the webmaster identified a technical path for preserving recordings.

The remaining challenge involved applying those solutions consistently, securing technical support and committing the staff resources necessary to restore access.

That makes the eventual request-only approach a management and policy decision—not an unavoidable command imposed by the ADA.

Technology Solutions Was Recommended—but Apparently Not Included

Spencer expressly recommended taking the recording question to the Technology Solutions Division. Yet the materials reviewed by The 101 Report do not show a Technology Solutions representative participating in the August Ethics Commission discussion.

That absence is difficult to overlook.

The issue involved website architecture, file storage, media hosting, transcription, captions and accessible document production. Those are not exclusively legal or ethical questions. They are also technical and operational questions.

A coordinated process could have examined:

• Automated transcription through software already licensed by the city

• Captioning for meeting videos

• Accessible HTML meeting summaries

• Searchable digital minutes

• Approved cloud or video-hosting platforms

• Standardized document templates

• Centralized remediation services

• Preservation of archived public records

Instead, Ethics Office employees spent substantial time manually rebuilding documents and transferring approved minutes into a PowerPoint template to produce accessible files.

The Commission’s August minutes demonstrate the limitations of that process. The official minutes list “Ethics Commission Website Update and ADA Accessibility Compliance” as a new-business item but do not summarize the discussion, identify the alternatives considered or record what members decided.

They identify John Nooney and Carnell Oliver as public speakers without documenting their comments.

The minutes describe themselves as a summary rather than a verbatim transcript and tell readers that a recording is available through the Ethics Office webpage. Yet the webpage does not provide a meeting video, and many of its audio references are not active links.

Modern recording and transcription tools would not eliminate the need for human review. They would, however, provide staff with a fuller record from which to prepare accurate minutes while reducing duplicated effort.

If Technology Solutions exists to support city departments, this is precisely the kind of operational problem in which its expertise should be visible.

The Office of General Counsel’s ADA Position Remains Unclear

Assistant General Counsel Regina Ross attended the August 19 Ethics Commission meeting.

An internal email sent before the meeting said Ross would take over the ADA portion of the presentation as a representative of the city’s ADA Compliance Committee.

The working meeting notes associate Ross with the option of placing a notice on the website stating that recordings were available through public-records requests instead of keeping those recordings online with accessible equivalents.

The official minutes, however, do not document Ross’s presentation, legal analysis or recommendation. Under the separate heading for the Office of General Counsel, the minutes simply state: “No report.”

That leaves an important question unanswered: Was Ross communicating the official legal position of Jacksonville’s Office of General Counsel, offering an individual risk-management recommendation or participating in another capacity?

On August 29, The 101 Report sent General Counsel Michael Fackler a written inquiry asking whether removing or delinking online records represents OGC’s standard policy for all city departments, boards, commissions and agencies.

We also asked whether OGC authorized the Ethics Office’s actions and whether other city entities had received similar guidance.

The same concerns were communicated to City Council members. As of publication, we have not received an explanation identifying who authorized the policy or whether it applies across city government.

That uncertainty matters. If one assistant general counsel advises a department to reduce online access, residents need to know whether that advice represents OGC’s position for every department—or only one attorney’s approach to one situation.

City government should not operate under multiple, potentially conflicting interpretations of the same federal accessibility requirement.

The Mayor’s Office Has Not Explained Whether the Policy Is Citywide

The city webmaster works through Public Affairs under the Mayor’s Office, placing another part of this chain within Mayor Donna Deegan’s administration.

The available correspondence does not show that Spencer ordered the Ethics Office to remove recordings or broadly diminish online access.

Her written guidance pointed in the opposite direction: provide accessible equivalents, consider approved external hosting and consult Technology Solutions.

But the Mayor’s Office oversees the city’s public-facing website structure. It therefore has a responsibility to determine whether departments are accurately interpreting the webmaster’s guidance and whether Jacksonville has one consistent policy governing inaccessible documents and recordings.

Without that clarification, one department could remediate and republish its materials while another removes the same type of records indefinitely. A third could require public-records requests for information that another division makes immediately available online.

The webmaster’s ability to edit the city website also does not answer the authority question. Technical access to a website is not the same as legal or executive authority to establish citywide public-records policy.

The available emails show the webmaster providing technical and accessibility guidance. They do not establish that she instructed the Ethics Office to conduct the broader removal effort that followed.

Jacksonville’s Public-Records Dispute Reveals a Larger Efficiency Gap

City government functions through specialized offices. The Office of General Counsel provides legal guidance. Technology Solutions provides technical expertise. The city’s ADA coordination structure should provide consistent accessibility direction. Public Affairs manages public communication and the city website. Department directors implement those policies.

Those offices do not create efficiency simply by existing. They create efficiency when they coordinate.

In this instance, the records show an Ethics Office attempting to interpret accessibility requirements, rebuild documents manually, reorganize its website and determine how meeting recordings should be handled.

The city webmaster pointed the office toward Technology Solutions, but the available records do not establish that Technology Solutions participated in the resulting decision.

An assistant general counsel participated in the meeting, but OGC has not said whether her apparent recommendation represents its citywide position.

Meanwhile, members of the public lost immediate access to information.

Government leaders can cite response times, completed projects, employee counts and budget metrics as evidence of efficiency. Those figures have value, but they do not reveal whether departments communicate effectively or whether employees duplicate work because available expertise never reaches them.

The practical test is what residents encounter.

In this case, residents encounter inactive links, missing recordings, incomplete meeting summaries and instructions to submit public-records requests for materials that were previously available online.

The Ethics Commission may be a relatively small part of Jacksonville government, but the breakdown it exposes is not small. The same lack of coordination could affect permitting, public works, planning, finance, public safety and any other department publishing information online.

If each office handles ADA compliance separately, Jacksonville risks duplicating expenses, producing inconsistent results and reducing access without determining whether better technical solutions already exist elsewhere in city government.

Jacksonville Needs One ADA Policy for Online Public Records

The unanswered question is no longer whether the Ethics Office reduced online access. The records show that it did.

The question is who authorized that approach—and whether Jacksonville intends to apply it across city government.

The correspondence does not establish that the Mayor’s Office webmaster recommended removing records. Spencer explained that audio and video could remain online with accessible alternatives and suggested consulting Technology Solutions about hosting, captioning and transcription.

The broader request-only approach appears to have developed afterward within the Ethics Office, with an assistant general counsel associated with the option of withholding recordings from the website.

But the Office of General Counsel has not said whether that represents its citywide legal position. The Mayor’s Office has not clarified whether it approved the Ethics Office’s approach. City Council members have not explained whether they support moving inaccessible records offline instead of making them accessible.

That silence leaves a consequential policy gap.

If each department interprets ADA compliance independently, Jacksonville could end up with different rules—and steadily diminishing public access—depending on which office maintains the records.

One department may seek technical assistance and preserve online access. Another may remove the same kind of material and require a public-records request.

Jacksonville needs one clearly identified authority, one legal interpretation and one technical process for all city departments. The Mayor’s Office, City Council, Office of General Counsel, ADA coordinator and Technology Solutions Division should establish who makes these decisions and how departments must carry them out.

ADA compliance should determine how Jacksonville makes its records accessible—not become an undefined justification for making them harder for everyone to find.