When anything goes wrong in City government, Sam Mousa, the City’s chief administrative officer, is in the crosshairs. When top administrators of the Better Jacksonville Plan quit, they told friends — and alluded to it in a letter — that Mousa was meddling in the Plan’s work.
Mousa met recently with Jeff Brooks and Fred Seely of the Daily Record to discuss his role in Mayor John Delaney’s administration, his reputation, why people enjoy taking shots at him.
Question: Does government need a guy that stands out there and delivers the bad news and takes all the heat? Is that your role?
Answer: It is my role. There needs to be a balance in government. I think the taxpayers want that balance. They want somebody who assures production takes place, budgets are adjusted, are organized. They need the comfort that someone is ensuring this is going on. And, if that’s my role, that’s my role. I do what I have to do to give the taxpayers the most we can give them. I feel very strong about that.
Q: Will Sam Mousa remain in the line of fire?
A: This isn’t the first time folks have shot at me. It just hurts. It hurts when that happens because I work very hard and I give it the best that I have to do the best job that I can. But, that’s the game and I’m a big boy and I can handle it. I’ve worked for three mayors, which is unusual. I’ve been promoted where others have been fired. I’ve been retained, one out of 12 to be retained. That speaks in spades. I have to be doing something correctly. I’ve never been accused of any criminal wrongdoing or corruptions. I never will. I will adhere to the law. I’m a stickler for the law and I’ll do the best that I can.
Q: When Derek Morse resigned, the rumbling started again that Sam Mousa is a bad guy, that he has tried to be heavy-handed in dealings with the JTA. What’s the deal?
A: I wish I knew. Let’s get some background, if we can. The JTA job was mine for the asking. Mayor Delaney approached me when Lex passed away, unfortunately. He said, ‘Sam, I know I would be probably holding you back. It’s probably more money. It’s probably a longer career working for a board. Less headaches, less problems. You work for a board of seven, not necessarily a Council of 19. But I really need you to stay and I feel awfully guilty about bringing this up. I need someone to help me run government for the rest of my term. Help me run Better Jax. And I feel guilty asking you to do this, but I want you to consider staying.’ My position is that my loyalty is to John Delaney. And I’m going to do whatever the mayor asks me to do.
Q: You said the JTA job was yours for the asking. Did you have the votes on the board?
A: I believe I did. In fact, I was encouraged by [retiring director] Miles [Francis] to apply. Miles and I had talked. Miles had talked to his board and I’ll never forget the day that Miles and I had lunch at the old Worman’s on San Jose. It was the first time I mentioned it to Miles and I said, ‘Miles, you can stay at the JTA as long as you want. But I feel I owe it to you [to tell you] firsthand I have an interest in your job.’ He said, ‘Sam, that is the greatest news I’ve ever heard.’ Regardless, I made a decision to stay with Mayor Delaney. I don’t want the JTA job, never considered it once I made my commitment to John. When you make a commitment to run government, that’s a big commitment. It’s a big job and you don’t play with that. You say yes sir, you do it and you get it over with. I don’t know why folks are shooting at me the way they are.
Q:We’re talking especially about JTA?
A: Yes. I don’t understand it.
Q:One hypothesis is that it is political season and bullets are going to be flying everywhere.
A: If I speculate, and I’m just speculating because I have no factual information, I believe it is the three or four board members who supported Derek Morse — this is purely speculation on Sam Mousa’s part — who are perhaps a little embarrassed with Mr. Morse’s tenure and are deciding to shoot at Sam rather than shoot at John. Now, did Sam assist the mayor in his charge when it came to the JTA issue? Yes, he did. Was John looking to help Michael Blaylock [who was Francis’ No. 2 man and who was passed over in favor of Morse]? On one hand he was, at one time. Did he ask me to call folks and help? Yes, I did.
Q:To help Morse or Blaylock?
A: Blaylock.
Q:So you were Blaylock people?
A: The mayor felt Michael, at the time, was within the system, had a knowledge of the system, had a good working relationship with City government. Morse — quite frankly, and I’ve told many people this and I’ll tell you guys this — is very competent, very sharp, well-organized, knows his business and I feel we had an extremely good working relationship. I have no idea why Morse decided to back off or to go elsewhere. I hear speculation, but that’s strictly speculation.
Q: In keeping with the political bullets flying, candidates are reluctant to run against the Delaney administration, so have they turned to you, to fire on you?
A: I believe they have. They know I’m loyal to John. I’m good at what I do. I work hard at what I do. They can shoot at me all they want.
Q: How would you describe your reputation?
A: I’m fair, but firm. I feel we owe the taxpayers an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. I came from [the] private [sector] and I know what it’s like to have to make payroll, have to finish work, so I try to bring that corporate principle into government with regards to get it done today if you can and don’t let it wait until Monday.
Q: Let’s switch to the Better Jacksonville Plan. [Director of Public Works] Joe Miller leaves, [baseball park project manager] Wayne Boy leaves, there’s all kind of mumblings that Mousa is meddling. You are the target again.
A: Joe Miller was allowed to hire his own staff. Joe Miller was allowed to put together his own organization. Things weren’t proceeding as expected.
Q: Did you let him put together his own staff?
A: Absolutely. It was his own people. I’m the type that if I have the trust and confidence in people, I let them ride. You must develop the trust and confidence in their work ethic, in their competence and anything else they do on a daily basis. I have many of those in government who have shown me their competence and trust. I know they can do the job and I let them do their job. We had to make some changes in Better Jax.
Q: Were they not doing their job?
A: Guys, let me tell you something. We have a policy here in government that we don’t shoot at anyone. We don’t want to shoot at anyone. We don’t need to shoot at anyone. We needed to make changes for a variety of reasons on the projects. We made those changes. We didn’t ask for anyone’s resignation letter. They made decisions on their own to resign based on the changes we had to make. The buck stops with me. I get to do the fun stuff and I get to do the hard stuff and it’s difficult to do the hard stuff.
Q: If the buck stops with you, what’s the mayor’s job?
A: Well, I say it stops with me. He gives me the directions and I do it.
Q: That’s why you are the target?
A: I guess so. I follow the mayor’s directions.
Q: Are you the target because Mayor Delaney can’t be the target?
A: I don’t know. I’m not very good at politics. I’m not going to get into why it’s me and not John. My job is to make recommendations to the mayor to help him run this government. John reviews my recommendations and says yea or nay. When he says yea or nay, then it is my job to implement it. The buck stops here may not have been the right phrase. But as far as Better Jax, people are looking at me. From the very beginning of the Plan I was identified as the person in charge. That was one of John’s reasons for asking me to stay in government. [He said] ‘Sam, I’ve got a $2.5 billion program on the street, the biggest program the state’s had for a long time and I need someone like you to help me keep it in line and keep it going, keep reviewing it.’ So I agreed to do it.
Q: Are you happy you did?
A: I’m tickled to death that I did. I love my job. I love working for the City of Jacksonville. I go from a variety of projects from day to day. I go from social services on one side to potential stadium expansion on the other side to everything in between. It has really opened my eyes. I think I’ve become a better administrator. It’s opened my eyes to what Jacksonville is and what Jacksonville needs and what Jacksonville can be. I just love working the job.
Q: What were some of the changes you were talking about that led to the personnel decisions?
A: We were organizing the project managers on the arena and there was a need for a more direct report to me and Audrey [Moran, the mayor’s chief of staff]. We had, in my opinion, a middle layer there that was not producing the results that we were hoping they’d produce. There were issues surfacing regarding the organization of budget, the organization of schedules and getting contracts. Quite frankly, a lot of that is due to being new to government. You’ve got to learn to work with bureaucracy. I’ve learned to let the bureaucracy work to help me where others tend to want to say, ‘There’s too much bureaucracy and I can’t get it done.’ I rarely say, ‘It can’t be done.’ When I was Public Works director, it was very easy for our building code inspectors to open up a code book and say, ‘This is what the code says, Sam. This is what I have to do.’ My statement has always been, ‘I can get my 13-year-old daughter to tell me what the code says. What I need is a certified code inspector to do the work within the code.’ Anybody can read a code. That’s the approach I take: try to help things work based on the limitations that you have. Limitations are not an obstacle to me. They are a challenge to try to work within them and stay within the guidelines.
Every person that tells you I’m not the kind of guy I’m supposed to be, I can get you five people to tell you my good sides. I have a wonderful working relationship with the City Council. They, at times, tend to bypass other folks and come to me because they know I can get it done. My charge is to get it done. Let’s not mess with it. If we can get it done today, let’s get it done today. If you need help, come ask.
Q: Was your first job here with Mayor Tommy Hazouri?
A: I went to work right out of school. I spent 12 years in private consulting work. I was asked to come to work by the Godbold administration. There were some things going on both in the administration at the time and at the firm I was working for at the time and the timing wasn’t right for me to make a jump from private to public. I respectfully declined the job offer to Jake and when Tommy came on board he hired Salem Salem as Public Works director. I had worked with Salem when he was with the DOT and I was in private so we knew each other very well.
Q: So your background is in transportation.
A: My background is engineering. I’m a structural civil engineer and transportation.
Q: Does that qualify you to deal with the political aspects of the job?
A: I sometimes think I’m a better administrator than an engineer. I don’t think I could read a set of plans today if I had to bet my life on it. You can quote that. Anyway, Salem called me and said, ‘Sam, I understand Jake tried to hire you’ and I said, ‘Yes, Salem, it just wasn’t right.’ He said, well is the timing different now? I said timing is much different now for a variety of reasons. And he asks if I’ll come and I said I would. I came to work as a civil servant professional engineer.
Six months later, Marvin Boutwell decided to retire from the chief of the Engineering Division. I applied for the job. Tommy appointed me city engineer. I worked four years for Tommy and when Ed Austin came on board, Ed promoted me — I was in Tommy’s camp at the time — but notwithstanding, Ed used my background and my work ethic and knowledge of government and promoted me to public works director. And then when John Delaney came on board he, quite frankly, discharged 11 out of 12 directors and kept me as the only one. So I was the only director to survive the Delaney transition. Lex asked me to come up here to help him as deputy Chief Administrative Officer/Public Works director. I did that; loved working with Lex. Unfortunately, things happened with Lex and John said, ‘Sam, I know you want to go to JTA, but Bubba you can’t leave me.’ And I said, ‘Mayor, I’ll do whatever you want.’
Q: Are you really a good guy?
A: I’m a great guy. My wife and family are wonderful and we have a great relationship.
Q: You have, obviously, a tough job. But, you have an image of being uptight, stern and unrelaxed.
A: I don’t unruffle my hair. I don’t let my guard down too often. I feel I have a huge responsibility in whatever job I do for the taxpayers. There’s time to work and there’s time to play. When it’s time to work, I work hard. When it’s time to play, I play very hard.
Q: What do you do when you play?
A: I like fishing and I love the Florida Gators. I can’t wait for football season to start back up and see how my man [new Coach Ron] Zook does. I enjoy my family life. I enjoy my time off, whatever time off I do get. It’s up to me. I could take much more time off if I want.
Q: Are you still close to Tommy [Hazouri]?
A: I know Tommy very well. We’re good friends.
Q: Who are your buddies?
A: Salem is my buddy. A lot of family cousins. Ron Salem, a first cousin, is a good friend. I just don’t let my guard down too often and perhaps some it could be that I came in from the outside as a civil servant. My efforts have really accelerated my career. There might be folks who are envious of that, I don’t know. I don’t really care. I feel I need to do what I have to do and be fair. I think you’ll find that if you talk to those who really know me, that I’m very fair. Whether that’s a Council person, a contractor. My first charge is always, ‘OK, we have a problem here. Let’s see what we can do to get it fixed. Let’s break it down.’ I’m a problem solver and I enjoy doing that.
Q: You’ve got 14 months left on this job. Then what?
A: I don’t know. Either, hopefully, I will go to work for a big engineering firm, or break out my own shingle with regards to what I can offer folks. I really love the area of quality control, planning and review, peer review. I’m a very detail-oriented person and very organized. A lot of that comes from my former career of being a bridge engineer. When you design bridges, you like going to sleep at night knowing it’s still going to be up when you wake up in the morning. I tend to believe that my detail, my organization comes from my engineering career where you had to be pretty detailed and pretty accurate in laying out bridges and working out the geometries and assuring that you don’t have the one cartoon where they build the bridge from both ends and wind up in the center.
Q: How about the Better Jacksonville Plan? Has that calmed down? The media seems to feel everything is in chaos.
A: It’s going nice.
Q. On time, on budget?
A: It’s budgeted correctly. It’s scheduled accurately. It’s proceeding on schedule and on budget. I do take credit for keeping us on schedule and on budget. I worry about stuff. It’s good to be apprehensive about stuff. In my opinion, it makes you do a better job if you are a little bit apprehensive about your work, your duties, your responsibilities. It keeps you on guard.