This is part of ongoing coverage from The Florida Trib and News4Jax about controversies swirling around Jacksonville City Council President Kevin Carrico and JEA.

Investigative documents released by State Attorney Melissa Nelson’s Office on Thursday show that Jacksonville City Council President Kevin Carrico withheld from multiple public-records requests a portion of a January text exchange with his boss at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida — a text that references a lucrative but ultimately canceled JEA land donation to the nonprofit’s partner organization.

The next month, Carrico nominated his boss, Paul Martinez, to JEA’s board of directors.

The unredacted text messages released by prosecutors – an unusual step that came after a coalition of Jacksonville media organizations fought for months for the documents’ disclosure – show that Carrico, the month before nominating Martinez, theorized that JEA officials rejected a potential donation to the Boys & Girls Clubs’ Nassau County partner because utility leaders were afraid of the reaction from the board of directors.

“First they said no to giving it away because of fear of the board, now they say not interested in selling either because of future growth in Nassau county,” Carrico wrote.

In the same text, Carrico then tells Martinez, “Guess it’s time they get a new board member to show them who’s boss … You ready to play the game?”

Last month, Nelson’s office sent a subpoena to JEA for records about the Boys & Girls Clubs of Nassau County’s efforts to obtain 4.9 acres of utility land that an appraisal valued at $1.1 million. Under a 2024 merger agreement, the Nassau Boys & Girls Clubs operates under the Northeast Florida branch, which employs Carrico. 

It wasn’t clear why that land deal – which had gained little public notice – had gotten the attention of prosecutors. But that subpoena was preceded by one sent to Carrico himself after he faced public scrutiny for his nomination of Martinez to the JEA board.

The messages show that Martinez repeatedly checked with Carrico on the status of the potential JEA donation.

Mitchell Stone, Carrico’s attorney, said in an interview Thursday the exchange was “an inartful use of words by my client.” Carrico and Martinez, he said, were trying to help the Nassau branch, which they help manage, secure land for a future teen center.

“This would not have benefitted their Boys and Girls Club at all, financially or otherwise,” Stone said. “There’s nothing there. There’s no quid pro quo, no pay to play, no influence or favor bank or anything else.”

Martinez, in a statement, said the Nassau County Boys & Girls Club Foundation is a separate organization from the Northeast Florida branch. That organization’s board “expressed that it was not receiving responses regarding the property and asked me to inquire on its behalf,” he said.

“Other than this inquiry, I had no further conversations with Mr. Carrico regarding the property,” he said. “Had I been appointed to the JEA Board, I understood that I would have been required to abstain from participating in any discussion or vote involving the property. That is how any potential conflict would have been handled.”

Initial records were altered

The unredacted documents also show that records released by Jacksonville City Council staffers earlier this month only disclosed snippets of larger conversations between Carrico and his political allies and friends. The January exchange with Martinez, for example, had been doctored to remove the top half of the conversation, eliminating any reference to the land donation.

That left Carrico’s quip to Martinez – “Guess it’s time they get a new board member to show them who’s boss …” – stripped of any context and rendered vague.

Those records contained neither standard redactions nor any citations to Florida law justifying the withholding of information, as is generally required.

Nelson’s office released the records at the request of several Jacksonville media organizations, which formed a loose coalition to fight for access to a more complete log of Carrico’s texts. 

City Council Secretary Jason Teal, who is also the city’s former general counsel, told media outlets and their attorneys that Carrico only withheld “private communications” that would fall outside the scope of Florida’s expansive public-records law. 

On Thursday, Teal said in a statement that Carrico considered the top half of his message to Martinez to relate to private matters, and thus he withheld it from disclosure. “He was not engaged in that portion of the conversation as the City Council President, but as a private employee of the Boys and Girls Club,” Teal wrote.

“However, it switched once it crossed into the Council President’s ability to introduce legislation for an appointment to the JEA Board; hence the reason that that portion of the text was provided as the public record.”

Stone, Carrico’s attorney, echoed Teal’s argument. “This was Kevin Carrico as the employee and representative of the Boys and Girls Club seeking a piece of land for the purposes of building a teen center,” he said.

Nassau land comes up repeatedly

The records from Nelson’s office show multiple instances in which the Nassau land comes up in Carrico’s conversations.

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. An appraisal JEA commissioned showed that the land was worth more than $1.1 million and would command a lease of more than $9,000 per month

Although Martinez distanced his organization from the Nassau nonprofit, Carrico, in an undated text message to Kurt Wilson, JEA’s former chief of staff, seemed to conflate the two organization’s efforts to obtain the land.

“Hey bro, remember when you looked into the Nassau County land next to the Boys & Girls Club?” Carrico wrote to Wilson. “I think last communication was that you were getting an appraisal? We have funds to build teen center would love it there, makes perfect sense. Can you dust of [sic] that conversation and give me an update?”

That message to Wilson, like the exchange with Martinez, was also abruptly cut off in the initial records the City Council produced in response to records requests from Jacksonville media outlets. Carrico’s request for Wilson to “dust” off the issue did not appear in those records.

Some of the texts Carrico turned over to Nelson leave the broader context of his messages unclear. In another text to Wilson, from this past January, Carrico wrote, “… more than willing to sit down with me and you and Vicki and Paul Martinez and maybe one of the Rich [sic] board members that has the money to build the club on that land if it helps.”

It’s not definitively clear if that message relates to the Nassau land deal, or if “Vicki” is Vickie Cavey, JEA’s CEO.

No response from Wilson to that message was included in the records.

Origins of State Attorney probe

As president, Carrico wields considerable influence over JEA: Four of JEA’s seven board members are nominated by the council president. Carrico also spun up a special committee earlier this year to investigate the workplace culture within JEA, following public scrutiny over his decision to nominate Martinez to the JEA board.

Nelson’s office has not commented on its investigation. Her office has issued multiple subpoenas since February, when Carrico, the council president, attempted to replace a member of JEA’s board of directors with Martinez, 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.

Stone said Nelson’s office hasn’t communicated with him about the status of its investigation but believes there won’t be “any negative aspect coming our way.”

Nate Monroe is Executive Editor of The Florida Trib. He can be reached at nate.monroe@floridatrib.org.