Jacksonville, Fla. \u2014 JEA is pushing back on Jacksonville\u2019s former City Council president after he suggested JEA CEO Vickie Cavey\u2019s recently announced leave of absence may be related to recent council investigations into the utility.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, JEA announced Cavey would be taking a leave of absence lasting longer than two weeks but less than two months.<\/p>\n
The announcement was immediately met with questions and insinuations from former Council President Kevin Carrico (R-District 4), who spent a great deal of his term as president launching investigations into JEA and Cavey.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n Carrico is also the subject of a criminal investigation launched by the State Attorney\u2019s Office surrounding his own dealings with the utility.<\/p>\n Carrico questioned the timing of Cavey\u2019s announcement, given it came two days after council auditors revealed the utility failed to collect between $55 million and $75 million in fees from large commercial customers over the past several decades.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile I continue to pray for Vicki Cavey and sincerely hope everything is okay with her, the public deserves answers about why she is abruptly stepping away from her role amid the scrutiny surrounding our investigation,\u201d Carrico said in a statement.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: <\/b>Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/b><\/a>]<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cWhat they\u2019re saying is not true. It\u2019s false and it\u2019s cruel,\u201d said Council Member Matt Carlucci (R-Group 4 At-Large) in response to Carrico\u2019s statement.<\/p>\n Carlucci told Action News Jax he\u2019s heard from several high-ranking leaders at JEA who have assured him Cavey\u2019s leave of absence is not related to her performance.<\/p>\n A JEA spokesperson told us the same thing when asked whether council investigations had any role in Cavey\u2019s decision to temporarily step aside.<\/p>\n \u201cThe two are unrelated and to even suggest that is absurd,\u201d said a JEA spokesperson.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: <\/b>Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/b><\/a>] <\/b><\/p>\n When we asked Carrico whether he wanted to retract his statement in light of JEA\u2019s comment, he did not respond.<\/p>\n \u201cKevin needs to be quiet. He needs to respect her privacy,\u201d said Carlucci. \u201dHe needs to go back to being a council member.\u201d<\/p>\n During Cavey\u2019s absence, JEA Chief Administrative Officer Jodi Brooks will serve as interim CEO.<\/p>\n JEA told Action News Jax that Cavey will continue to be paid, as she is using accrued PTO time while she is away.<\/p>\n Click here<\/b><\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/b><\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacksonville, Fla. \u2014 JEA is pushing back on Jacksonville\u2019s former City Council president after he suggested JEA CEO…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":975213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5136],"tags":[61783,5229,252066,290476,391350,391349,14336,95053,3188,723,11561,7310,13113,3005,77156,14626,391351,2572,257879,95058,425,48506,50,5207,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,264091,391348],"class_list":["post-976700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-61783","tag-america","tag-cario","tag-carrio","tag-cavey","tag-cay","tag-ceo","tag-chief_administrative_officer","tag-fl","tag-florida","tag-jack","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-city-council","tag-jake","tag-jake_stan","tag-jea","tag-jody_brooks","tag-kevin","tag-kevin_carico","tag-krio","tag-local","tag-matt_carlucci","tag-news","tag-president","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-vickie-cavey","tag-vicky_cavey"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117028588694647280","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=976700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/975213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=976700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=976700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=976700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}