Jacksonville Pays More at the Top. Does Consolidated Government Really Explain Why?

John Hawley

Sep 14, 2026

The Mayor's Office- Part X- Editorial

News4Jax says Jacksonville’s consolidated government helps explain why its highest-paid public employees out-earn those in several peer cities. Consolidation is a legitimate consideration. But look at who actually makes up Jacksonville’s Top 20, and that explanation addresses only a small part of the salaries in question.

The Jacksonville Daily Record recently put a striking number on Jacksonville’s public-sector salary pyramid: the city’s 20 highest-paid public employees average $379,955 a year. That compares with $297,519 in San Antonio, $264,559 in Orlando, $261,707 in Charlotte and $221,264 in Tampa. The Daily Record described the exercise as an effort to show not only who makes decisions in local government, but which employees governments appear to value most through compensation. Four days later, News4Jax published a follow-up under the headline “Jacksonville’s highest-paid public employees: Why comparisons with other cities may not tell the whole story.” That's a fair premise. Raw salary rankings rarely tell the whole story. But neither did the explanation News4Jax offered.

As published, the story relied on one quoted analytical source beyond the salary reporting it was carrying forward from the Daily Record: Rick Mullaney, News4Jax's political analyst and executive director of Jacksonville University's Public Policy Institute.

Mullaney's argument centered on Jacksonville's consolidated city-county government. Jacksonville officials, he noted, can carry broader responsibilities than officials in cities where municipal and county functions remain separate. There is logic to that. If Jacksonville combines responsibilities that another community divides between two governments, comparing the salary of a Jacksonville official with someone performing only the municipal half of that job could be misleading. But before accepting consolidation as an explanation for Jacksonville's unusually high Top-20 average, there's a more basic question:

Who are the 20 people producing that average in the first place?

That's where the explanation begins to break down.

Mullaney also brings an unusual perspective to this discussion because he isn't simply an academic who has studied Jacksonville government from the outside.

Jacksonville University says he spent nearly 20 years as legal counsel and adviser to Jacksonville's consolidated government, serving Mayors Ed Austin, John Delaney and John Peyton. He spent 13 years as Jacksonville's General Counsel, served as Delaney's chief of staff and previously headed the General Counsel Office's Tort Litigation Department. Today, he is executive director and Robert T. Shircliff Chair at JU's Public Policy Institute and serves as a political analyst for WJXT Channel 4 and WOKV.

That experience gives Mullaney substantial knowledge of consolidation and Jacksonville government. It doesn't disqualify his opinion.

But it is relevant context when a news organization presents a former longtime City official as the principal expert explaining why Jacksonville's public-sector compensation may be justified. And more importantly, the consolidation argument should still fit the salaries it is being used to explain.

Our review of the Daily Record's Top 20 found that 12 of Jacksonville's 20 highest-paid public employees are associated with JEA, JTA, JAXPORT or the Jacksonville Aviation Authority.

That's 60% of the entire Top 20.

Those aren't simply department directors who inherited both city and county responsibilities when Jacksonville consolidated. They are executives of specialized public authorities. Jacksonville itself lists the Jacksonville Aviation Authority, Jacksonville Port Authority, Jacksonville Transportation Authority and JEA under Independent Boards and Agencies, along with the Police and Fire Pension Fund.

That distinction matters.

JEA operates a major electric, water and wastewater utility. JTA runs a transportation system. JAXPORT operates a seaport. JAA operates Jacksonville's airport system. Their executives are hired through authority governance structures and operate in specialized industries with their own national compensation markets.

As we documented in Part IX, those boards have repeatedly used market comparisons, executive searches and industry benchmarks when determining what their leaders should be paid.

So what does Jacksonville's consolidation of city and county government actually explain about those salaries?

Very little on its face.

A JEA executive doesn't suddenly manage a county electric utility in addition to a city electric utility because Jacksonville consolidated.

A JAXPORT executive isn't performing one port job for the city and another for Duval County.

The relevant comparisons for those positions aren't primarily Jacksonville versus Tampa or Jacksonville versus Orlando. They're JEA versus comparable utilities, JTA versus comparable transit systems, JAXPORT versus comparable ports and JAA versus comparable airport authorities.

That's precisely why Part IX didn't argue that these executives are necessarily overpaid.

We asked whether their compensation is justified by the scale of the organization, relevant industry market and measurable results.

Then consider another six of Jacksonville's Top 20: medical professionals in the Medical Examiner's Office.

Here again, consolidation doesn't adequately explain what we're looking at.

Jacksonville's Medical Examiner's Office isn't even limited to Jacksonville and Duval County. The City says the office provides services to more than 1.3 million people across two medical-examiner districts encompassing Clay, Columbia, Duval, Hamilton and Nassau counties.

These are highly specialized physicians performing forensic work for a multicounty region.

Their compensation may be entirely appropriate. Recruiting and retaining qualified forensic pathologists presents a very different labor-market problem from hiring an ordinary municipal administrator.

But again, that's not fundamentally a consolidated Jacksonville city-county government explanation.

Now put those two groups together.

Twelve of the Top 20 are associated with independent authorities. Six more are specialized medical professionals serving a regional medical-examiner operation.

That's 18 of the 20 positions generating the headline salary comparison.

Only two fall outside those two categories.

That doesn't discredit Mullaney's broader point that consolidation complicates comparisons between Jacksonville and conventional cities.

It does something more specific:

It substantially limits how much that explanation tells us about the particular Top-20 salary statistic News4Jax was examining.

In fact, the Daily Record itself acknowledged from the beginning that Northeast Florida government consists of a mixture of city and county governments, independent agencies and bureaucracies.

That's exactly the distinction that should have driven the follow-up analysis.

If Jacksonville's Top 20 were dominated by department directors performing both municipal and county functions, consolidation would be an obvious place to look for the salary premium.

But they're not.

The Top 20 is overwhelmingly populated by executives of independent authorities and specialized medical professionals.

That deserved to be challenged in the News4Jax story.

Instead, viewers received one principal expert explanation from someone whose own professional history is deeply rooted in Jacksonville's consolidated-government structure.

Again, Mullaney may have offered News4Jax additional observations that weren't included in the published report. We can only evaluate what News4Jax chose to publish.

And what it published answered one question while leaving the more relevant one largely untouched.

There is also an irony here.

News4Jax itself has previously reported on Jacksonville salaries in ways that recognized specialization as an important factor. In a 2021 examination of Jacksonville's highest earners, Mullaney told the station that salary increases were appearing particularly in professional services such as medicine and law. That report found the City's highest earner at the time was its interim district chief medical examiner.

That's a much more targeted explanation than consolidation.

The right conclusion isn't that the Daily Record's original comparison was perfect.

It wasn't.

Comparing one city's 20 highest-paid public employees with another city's Top 20 can produce apples-to-oranges results when the governments organize utilities, transportation, airports, ports, medical services and county functions differently.

News4Jax was right to question that.

But the answer to an imperfect comparison isn't another broad generalization.

It's a better comparison.

Separate Jacksonville's consolidated-government employees from its independent authorities.

Compare authority executives with equivalent organizations.

Compare medical examiners with regional forensic operations competing for the same specialized physicians.

Then compare Jacksonville's actual consolidated-government workforce and executives with Nashville-Davidson, Louisville-Jefferson, Indianapolis-Marion and other governments with genuinely comparable responsibilities.

And finally ask the question that started this series:

What are taxpayers and ratepayers getting for the money?

If Jacksonville pays more because its executives manage larger organizations, show the scale.

If it pays more because specialized talent commands a premium, show the labor market.

If consolidation creates greater executive responsibility, identify which positions carry those additional duties and quantify them.

And if higher compensation produces better performance, show the results.

That's the distinction missing from the News4Jax follow-up.

Mullaney's consolidation argument may be completely valid for some Jacksonville positions. But it doesn't adequately explain the overwhelming majority of the Top 20 that generated the $379,955 average being discussed.

That isn't an argument that those employees should make less.

It's an argument that the explanation should fit the evidence.

News4Jax set out to show why the Daily Record's salary comparison “may not tell the whole story.”

On that point, we agree.

But when 12 of the Top 20 are tied to independent authorities and another six are specialized medical professionals, “Jacksonville is consolidated” doesn't tell the whole story either.

A public salary debate shouldn't be settled by a ranking.

And it shouldn't be settled by expert authority.

Show us which jobs are actually different. Show us the appropriate comparisons. Show us the results.

Then let the numbers make the case.

We Welcome Your Thoughts.