Jacksonville City Council member Terrance Freeman had his head in his hands.
“The definition of insanity,” he said, voting against reconsidering amendments to the proposed $2.2 billion 2025-26 city budget.
The definition of insanity is often quoted as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
Freeman, along with 18 other Council members, were taking a stand on amendments that dominated debate about the proposed budget.
Repeatedly, Council voted to reconsider amendments to the budget proposed by member Rory Diamond barring the city from spending money on abortion; persons without permanent legal status; and diversity, equity and inclusion.
Repeatedly, they weren’t finding a solution to let them leave City Hall with an approved budget.
Ten Council members, those pushing cuts to the city’s millage rate and budget, wanted to include Diamond’s amendments with the budget and said they planned to stand by their convictions.
Nine Council members stood in opposition. Some described the amendments as hateful, racist and misogynistic.
Others said they thought the policy didn’t belong in a budget bill.
Ten votes is usually enough to pass the budget legislation, which Council began debating at 3 p.m. Sept. 23.
However, two members who supported the amendments – Mike Gay and Freeman – couldn’t vote on the full budget due to business conflicts.
That meant the Council had the votes to pass the amendments, but didn’t have the votes to pass the overall budget with them included, with eight voting in favor and nine against.
Stalemate broken
About 3:30 a.m., after taking a 10-minute break, member Will Lahnen broke the stalemate.
Lahnen, who had voted for the Diamond amendments repeatedly during Finance Committee budget hearings and a budget hearing Sept. 9, offered to flip his vote on the amendments if someone opposing them would flip their vote to pass the budget.
His offer received support from members Tyrona Clark-Murray and Michael Boylan, both of whom had said they would not change their votes on the Diamond amendments under any circumstances.
With those members willing to flip, Lahnen said he felt Council was nearing a resolution.
“I supported Council member Diamond, I think, on every piece of legislation that’s come through. But again, we just at some point you have to be pragmatic,” Lahnen said. “You start thinking real pragmatically at about 3:30 in the morning.”
Lahnen’s offer came after Council members on both sides of the Diamond amendments issue pleaded with each other to relent, while refusing to do so themselves.
However, with sunrise closer than sunset, Lahnen’s offer to cut out the amendments made sense to members who said they wanted to keep policy out of the budget.
Lahnen’s move earned praise from several Council members. Vice President Nick Howland, who voted for the Diamond amendments, said it was “one of the best leadership moves I’ve seen, and one of the most magnanimous.”
“I think what Council member Lahnen did was very commendable,” Finance Committee Chair Raul Arias said.
“He did it for our city so we could pass a balanced budget, a good budget overall. I really do commend him, and I’m proud to be serving next to him.”
Budget approved
With the Diamond amendments defeated, the Council then voted 15-2 with two abstentions to pass the budget.
While the final margin was wide, not all were fully satisfied. Earlier in the debate, a property tax rate reduction was approved in a 10-9 vote after hours of debate.
Members Jimmy Peluso and Diamond voted no. Peluso said he wanted to reconsider lowering the millage rate.
Diamond, whose amendments failed, has never voted for a budget since his election to Council in 2019.
However, most members said they were willing to find a compromise to leave City Hall in time to take their kids to school in a few hours.
“At the end of the day, we got 15 votes on the budget,” Lahnen said after the meeting was adjourned.
“So I was glad to see that a vast majority of the Council supported this overall budget. It’s not weeks of work, it’s months of work that go into this.”
End of Diamond amendments
There is little hope for Diamond amendments in the future, member Ron Salem said. Because they are no longer attached to the budget, Diamond will have to wait until February 2026, one year after a similar ordinance was vetoed by Mayor Donna Deegan and didn’t have the votes in Council to override.
If Diamond put forth another similar ordinance again, Salem said, he didn’t see a path forward.
Had the Diamond amendments earned a line-item veto from Deegan in the budget this year, Council could have overridden with 10 votes.
However, with a nonbudget item veto, Council needs a two-thirds majority, which it did not have last time.
Council members, along with Deegan, said they hoped they’d move on from the monthslong budget debate. Both sides said they wanted future governance, and future budgets, to be far less hostile.
“I hope that we’ll have budgets that are better than this. Going forward, I think revenue will be good, and it doesn’t look like the deficits are that bad,” Salem said.
“We started yesterday with prayers from the faith community,” Deegan said in a statement.
“I pray that we start to heal from this difficult budget season and move forward together with love for Jacksonville guiding us.”