Jacksonville Aviation Authority officials are preparing to hire outside attorneys to sue City Hall, according to a draft lawsuit and resolution, setting up a showdown years in the making that stems from City Council President Nick Howland’s repeated efforts to shape the agency’s budget. In remarkably incensed language, the lawsuit accuses the city of trying to “pickpocket” the authority’s some $300 million cash on hand.

The authority’s board of directors will meet Thursday in a special session to consider authorizing the litigation, which follows years of public and behind-the-scenes acrimony that has been documented in a series of recent stories by The Florida Trib and The Florida Times-Union.

The potential lawsuit surfaces just as Howland takes power as the council president, which gives him increased sway over the upcoming budget process. 

For more than two years, Howland has pressed aviation officials over ways they could use the agency’s cash on hand to fund a list of different city priorities, including the construction of a new county jail. JAA officials have rejected several of those proposals as running afoul of Federal Aviation Administration rules, and Howland has dropped several of them.

Most recently, Howland has pushed for expanding Florida State College at Jacksonville’s aviation mechanic program at Cecil Airport on the Westside, a former Navy base with one of the longest runways on the East Coast. Howland is not alone among city officials in believing JAA should do more to develop Cecil, but he has been the most vocal.

This past session, Howland lobbied the Legislature to pass a bill, sponsored by State Rep. Wyman Duggan, R-Jacksonville, adding economic development at Cecil Airport to the authority’s mission, which passed both chambers unanimously and is now law.

“It is unfortunate that, after such a clear mandate, JAA is still refusing to comply with local and state law and is now considering hiring outside counsel to fight it,” Howland said. “That not only undermines Jacksonville’s consolidated form of government, is likely illegal, and disregards the clear will of the people to create jobs and economic opportunity for our community.”

Over the objections of aviation authority leaders, City Council added $13 million to this year’s budget for development of Cecil, a dispute that several major investment banks recently noted as a development that could sway the willingness of investors to bankroll financing a new concourse at Jacksonville International Airport.

For its part, aviation officials have pointed to recent “homeruns” at Cecil like an expansion by Boeing, a longtime tenant, that is adding more than 500 new jobs. Otto Aviation announced last year it plans to build a business jet manufacturing plant at Cecil.

Aviation officials “have reason to believe” the council will “force further unwanted and unlawful projects and expenditures on JAA,” says a copy of the resolution the agency’s board will consider next week.

Lawsuits between the city and one of its so-called “independent authorities” have been exceedingly rare, in large part because a succession of city general counsels consider such moves to violate the charter, which voters approved decades ago to create a consolidated county-city government. 

That theory was tested once in recent years, during a 2019 fight between the Duval County School Board and Jacksonville City Council over placing a schools sales-tax proposal on the ballot. In that dispute, Circuit Court Judge Gary Wilkinson ruled that the School Board had the right to hire its own lawyer, over the objections of the city’s general counsel. The two sides settled that dispute before further court action went forward.

“For over two decades, JAA and the city coexisted peacefully and productively,” the aviation authority’s draft lawsuit says. 

“ … That long peace has now been broken – not by JAA, but by the Jacksonville City Council. The Council has mismanaged the city’s financial affairs and now wants to pay for the consequences with other people’s money.” 

Mayor Donna Deegan’s office said it was aware of the lawsuit but had no comment.

In the suit, JAA takes direct aim at Howland, who it says now directs the council from its “most powerful seat.” 

“This should be a settled matter,” Howland said. “Jacksonville’s focus should be on creating jobs and growing our economy – not on wasting taxpayer dollars litigating a decision the people’s elected representatives have already made.”

Although lawsuits between the city and local agencies are almost unheard of, tensions over the city’s perceived heavy handedness tend to surface from time to time. One of the core issues in this potential lawsuit is how much authority, if any, the city possesses over the Jacksonville Aviation Authority, and whether it must submit to findings by the city general counsel.

JAA is, among other things, planning to ask a judge to declare that it’s an agency of the state and not City Hall, and to find that city officials have narrow powers to direct its spending or investigate it.

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