A JEA board committee voted March 2 to replace Rick Morales III as vice chair after he publicly criticized the city-owned utility’s CEO and asked for her resignation.
The executive committee’s vote sets the stage for a full board vote on whether to take Morales out of the progression that positioned him to succeed Chair Joe DiSalvo on the seven-member board.
The committee’s action came after the full board voted 6-1, with Morales as the only dissenter, on Feb. 24 to express support for CEO Vickie Cavey amid allegations of toxicity and racism against her.
The executive committee voted 3-1 to rescind the board leadership selections made Feb. 11 and to recommend installing MG Orender as chair, Arthur Adams Jr. as vice chair and Donald “Worth” McArthur as secretary.
DiSalvo, Orender and committee member John Baker were in the majority in the voice vote, and Morales voted no.
“Why would you want a board chair not supporting the CEO?” DiSalvo said afterward.
“That’s not the way it’s supposed to happen, especially when they can show no evidence.”
'Toxic behavior'
During the Feb. 24 board meeting, Morales said he approached Cavey on Feb. 16 after hearing concerns from senior members of JEA’s staff that her “toxic behavior” was affecting dozens of employees. He said he asked her to resign, and she initially said she would do so but then changed course and cut off communications with him.
Morales said he held meetings with staff members over the past six weeks because he was in line to become board chair and felt it was his duty to get their input on the state of the utility.
He told the executive committee that he came forward because employees had no other safe place to turn. Going through JEA’s processes for reporting workplace behavior or a discrimination issue would eventually lead to someone who reported directly to Cavey, he said.
“They have no means of recourse,” he said. “I’m not worried about myself as the chairman, my concern is with the employees of JEA.”
Orender challenged Morales to name an example when an employee making a confidential complaint was identified.
“You can’t, because it hasn’t happened,” he said.
Words of support, criticism
Baker praised Morales as “one of Jacksonville’s premier business leaders” but said he could not support him in a board leadership role.
“It hurts me to see us drop him from this slate, but I think really because of the events of last week we have really no option,” he said. “Rick can and should be chair of JEA at some point, but now is not the time.”
DiSalvo said Morales offered no evidence of inappropriate behavior by Cavey nor proof of his claim that employees had nowhere to turn.
“If there were something to (the allegations of) toxic leadership, racism, whatever, we’d be hearing it through all sorts of channels,” DiSalvo said.
“You’ve all seen this before. You’ll hear it through gossip. You’ll hear it through letters. None of those transpired. So to say that the processes don’t work, the employees are too intimidated to come forward again, I see no merit in that.”
During the board meeting, Morales’ fellow board members criticized him for not following JEA’s procedure for lodging workplace or ethics complaints, and for taking his concerns public without first sharing them with the board.
Morales’ request for Cavey to resign was first reported in the media.
Lead-up to the vote
The committee vote on Morales comes after public comments by Jacksonville City Council President Kevin Carrico and former JEA Chief of Staff Kurt Wilson criticizing Cavey, JEA’s top executive since April 2024.
Those comments came after Carrico drew scrutiny for nominating Paul Martinez, his boss at Boys and Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida, to the JEA board.
Martinez is the president and CEO at Boys and Girls Clubs, Carrico works as vice president of strategic initiatives.
After Action News Jax reported that texts between JEA board member Adams and Carrico showed Carrico made Martinez’s nomination as a “big favor” to a friend, Martinez withdrew his name from consideration.
The State Attorney’s Office issued a subpoena to Carrico for texts and emails related to the situation.
Council member Jimmy Peluso called for Carrico to step down as Council president, to which Carrico replied by calling Peluso a “drama queen” and saying his office was “fully complying with the State Attorney’s request and will continue to do so.”
Carrico and Council member Ron Salem, the Council liaison to the JEA board, both said they would support an investigation if the board did order one.
Morales requested an investigation during the board meeting, but his motion did not receive a second.
Mayor backs Cavey
Cavey has denied the allegations, telling the board that if those were true, complaints would have emerged earlier in her more than 40 years with JEA and “would not suddenly appear overnight in a political news cycle.”
“My leadership style is rigorous, and it is fair, consistent and grounded in respect. I hold senior leaders to high standards, because JEA’s mission is critical,” she said.
Cavey, a longtime JEA engineer and administrator, came out of retirement in March 2024 when the board asked her to serve as a liaison between them and former CEO Jay Stowe’s administration to review the utility’s organizational structure and help choose an independent consultant that the board would pay to examine JEA’s capital improvement plan.
During her decades-long career with JEA, Cavey held such positions as special assistant to the CEO for external affairs, director of strategy development and execution and director of strategic partnerships and acquisitions.
Mayor Donna Deegan defended Cavey during a Feb. 20 news conference in which she said the CEO was the victim of a “smear campaign” launched after JEA declined to extend a lobbying contract with Ballard Partners, which employs former Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry and his former chief of staff, Jordan Elsbury.
Deegan told reporters to “connect the dots” after she was asked about Curry and Elsbury being involved.
Curry denied any involvement, and Elsbury described Deegan’s accusations as “Wizard of Oz stuff.”