This story was reported in partnership with News4Jax

A canceled land deal between JEA and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Nassau County Foundation has attracted the notice of State Attorney Melissa Nelson’s office, according to a subpoena that one of her veteran prosecutors sent last week to the utility, a copy of which The Florida Trib and News4Jax reviewed. 

It’s not clear why Nelson’s office is probing that land deal, which JEA ultimately called off, but the subpoena is at least the third prosecutors have issued this year amid a tangled series of controversies swirling around JEA, Jacksonville City Council President Kevin Carrico and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida, where Carrico is a vice president.

The Northeast Florida club is a separate organization from its neighboring Nassau counterpart, though the two announced a partnership agreement in 2024 on operating two new youth centers in the region. JEA officials knew Carrico to sometimes ask about the status of the Nassau land, and correspondence shows he received a copy of an appraisal JEA obtained on the parcel in December.

Carrico wouldn’t comment on the subpoena.

Nelson’s office wouldn’t comment on the subpoena or confirm the existence of any investigation, and the two Boys & Girls Clubs branches did not respond to requests for comment. JEA has said it’s cooperating with Nelson’s office.

The subpoena seeks communication records and other documents concerning an appraisal JEA commissioned for a 4.9-acre tract of rural land near Yulee High and Middle schools that the Boys & Girls Clubs of Nassau County Foundation was eyeing as the site of a future teen club, according to utility records. The appraisal determined the land was worth more than $1.1 million and would command a lease of more than $9,000 per month.

JEA, according to a draft agreement that was never signed, considered leasing the land to the nonprofit for $1 per year.

Under previous CEO Jay Stowe, the talks eventually sputtered, prompting an urgent letter from the Nassau Boys & Girls Clubs Foundation directly to Stowe asking him to rectify an “extremely grave situation.” 

“We are at a loss for the lack of communication and sudden severance of the relationship,” the nonprofit’s president wrote Stowe in the fall of 2023.

After Stowe’s departure, JEA leadership under incoming CEO Vickie Cavey also shut down the possibility of donating the land. Real estate officials inside JEA ultimately concluded the utility was not permitted to essentially give the valuable land away to the Nassau County Boys & Girls organization, but they did offer the nonprofit the chance to discuss a market-rate lease or purchase of agency-owned land.

The deal would “have to be vetted again through Vickie based on the ask,” former JEA chief of staff Kurt Wilson wrote to Carrico in December 2025. The documents don’t show that Carrico responded to Wilson’s email.

For months, tensions between the Republican-controlled City Council; Mayor Donna Deegan, a Democrat; and JEA have mushroomed into a convoluted, revolving series of controversies that have generated three parallel investigations.

Nelson, the state attorney, has issued at least two prior subpoenas since February, when Carrico, the council president, attempted to replace a member of JEA’s board of directors with Paul Martinez, Carrico’s boss at the Boys & Girls Club of Northeast Florida, describing the move in a text message as a “big favor” for a friend. 

Nelson’s office sent Carrico a subpoena for more of his communication records after that text thread — between Carrico and a JEA board member whom he was hoping to replace with his boss — became public.

Weeks later, Nelson’s prosecutors sent JEA a subpoena for a host of communication records about Cavey, JEA’s current CEO, as well as discussions involving Carrico and a high-powered lobbying firm that employs former Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry.

Carrico responded to public criticism of his intentions, since abandoned, to appoint Martinez to the JEA board by accusing Cavey of overseeing a toxic and racist culture at JEA, though without providing any specific accusations of wrongdoing. He announced the formation of a council investigative committee that has over a series of weeks explored a growing list of issues at the city-owned utility.

And Attorney General James Uthmeier’s office recently sent JEA a subpoena of its own seeking to learn more about a cancelled contract between JEA and Ballard Partners, a high-powered lobbying firm that employs Curry, the city’s former Republican mayor and a critic of Deegan’s administration.

News4Jax reporter Tarik Minor contributed to this story.

Nate Monroe is the executive editor of The Florida Trib. He can be reached at nate.monroe@floridatrib.org.