Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier’s Office of Statewide Prosecution has subpoenaed records concerning Mayor Donna Deegan’s March 3, 2025 meeting with then-JTA board member Megan Hayward. Prosecutors are seeking records from March 1 through March 10, including handwritten notes, emails, texts, recordings and messages held by the city or its employees. The city has until October 20 to respond.

Hayward says she warned Deegan about JTA spending and invoices at that meeting. Deegan has described a discussion about ridership figures and a JTA contract involving a firm that employed former CEO Nat Ford’s wife, but has not acknowledged Hayward’s account of an invoice warning. With JTA now facing a major budget shortfall and service cuts, what the mayor was told and what her office did afterward matters.

Deegan Said She Looked Back at the Notes

Deegan told reporters, “I went back and looked at the notes of my meeting with her.” Action News Jax subsequently requested notes from the meeting and reported that the mayor’s office declined to provide them, saying they were not public records. Prosecutors have now cited Deegan’s own statement in their request for the meeting records.

The mayor’s office says Chief Communications Officer Phil Perry attended the meeting and took notes. It described Perry’s notes as personal and never shared with another person, while promising to provide them to prosecutors after review by the Office of General Counsel. That answer raises the question at the heart of this subpoena: Were Perry’s notes the ones Deegan said she reviewed?

If they were, how does the office reconcile Deegan’s statement with its claim that Perry never shared them? If Deegan reviewed another set of notes, who wrote those? Or is she changing her story?

Why Describe Notes From Official Business as “Personal”?

Perry attended as the mayor’s chief communications officer while Deegan met with a JTA board member about agency business. Readers have reason to ask why notes he took about that meeting would be described as personal, especially when the mayor later said she reviewed notes of the discussion. Calling them personal also mattered in practice: the mayor’s office declined Action News Jax’s request to see the notes on the ground that they were not public records. Was Perry's private notes a message about something to his husband Joshua Hicks who Deegan appointed as the City of Jacksonville's Affordable Housing Director immediately upon taking office? Why would an important meeting such as this have the Chief Communications Officer attending and taking notes that they now claim are personal? Nothing to see here? Really?

Florida law does allow an official to keep notes solely as a private memory aid, even while conducting official business. But the label does not decide the issue: the Florida Supreme Court’s test asks whether material was intended to preserve, communicate or formalize knowledge about agency business. Whether these notes were kept only for Perry’s memory, or were used to record and convey Hayward’s concerns, is therefore a material concern that shouldn't be covered by claiming he wasn't actually actually creating a public record by doing his job of taking notes of the meeting.

What Happened After Hayward Raised Her Concerns?

The mayor’s office points to City Council’s handling of Elaine Brown’s JTA board nomination as evidence that Hayward’s concerns were taken seriously. On March 17, Rules Committee Chair Nick Howland delayed a vote for two weeks because approving Brown would end Hayward’s board service while her concerns remained unresolved; the committee approved Brown on March 31, and the full Council approved her on April 8.

That sequence shows the Council paused an appointment and waited for JTA to address questions publicly. It does not show that the mayor’s office examined Hayward’s specific invoice allegations or took steps in response. What did Deegan ask her staff to check after the meeting, and what answers came back? The notes and other subpoenaed communications may help answer that question.

If the mayor relied on the Council’s review, why did she consider it sufficient? That question is especially pointed given her political clashes with Jacksonville’s Republican-majority Council back then. A following installment of JTA at a Crossroads will examine how council members handled Hayward’s concerns and the documented relationships among participants in that process.

For now, the subpoena brings the story back to one statement from the mayor: she said she looked at notes of her meeting with Hayward. The mayor’s office says Perry’s notes were personal and never shared. Which notes did Deegan review, what did they record, and what did her administration do after receiving a board member’s warning?

THE JTA AT A CROSSROADS SERIES!