Mayor Donna Deegan signed an executive order this week encouraging financial, governance and audit training for members of Jacksonville’s boards, commissions and independent authorities.
Good.
Actually, very good.
I have been beating this drum for years.
People sitting on prestigious boards overseeing hundreds of millions — sometimes billions — of dollars in public assets should understand financial statements, audits, budgets, internal controls and their fiduciary responsibilities.
The Mayor’s executive order specifically calls for training in those areas and says she wants to work with City Council to strengthen the standards used to vet, appoint and reappoint board members.
I applaud that. But I would take it a step further.
When we are selecting people to oversee major public agencies, we should be looking for seasoned people who already understand business, finances, leadership and accountability.
Financial training should be the floor, not the qualification.
But qualifications aren’t enough either.
We also need to pay attention to who these people are.
Why do they want the appointment? Do they understand that they are there to serve the public — not management, not City Hall, not the person who appointed them and certainly not themselves?
Do they have the courage to ask a difficult question when everyone else at the table would rather move on?
Will they read the materials before the meeting?
Will they challenge something that doesn’t make sense?
Will they remember that the money being discussed belongs to the taxpayers?
And, most importantly, are they people of integrity?
A résumé can tell us where someone has worked.
It cannot tell us whether they will speak up when speaking up becomes uncomfortable.
That is why vetting board members needs to mean more than checking professional credentials and making a few phone calls.
We should be checking the quality of the person as carefully as we check the quality of the résumé.
Public service requires something deeper than expertise. It requires a servant’s mindset — an understanding that a prestigious board appointment is not an honor bestowed upon you. It is a responsibility you have agreed to carry on behalf of the citizens of Jacksonville.
Jacksonville doesn’t merely need financially trained board members. We need qualified board members of integrity operating under strong governance policies in a culture that welcomes questions instead of punishing the people who ask them.
There is another piece of this that I believe is just as important: every one of our major boards needs its own governance policy manual.
Years ago, when Jim Dickenson was CEO of JEA, I helped facilitate the creation of JEA’s Board Governance Policy Book. The purpose was pretty simple: everybody needed to understand the rules of the road.
What is management’s job?
What is the board’s job?
What information should the board receive?
How does the board evaluate the CEO?
How are financial concerns handled?
What happens when somebody sees something that doesn’t look right?
Those policies create clarity before a crisis happens.
A few months before former JTA CEO Nat Ford resigned, I personally met with him.
During that meeting, I suggested that he contact JEA, get a copy of the governance policy book we had developed years earlier, gather the JTA board together and use it as a starting point.
Don’t reinvent the wheel. Go through it page by page. Keep what works. Change what doesn’t. Modify it to fit JTA.
That idea is still sitting there waiting to be picked up.
And I hope the JTA Board will make it a priority — perhaps right after they find the millions of dollars they need to keep the buses running and their employees paid.
But there is still another piece missing from this week’s announcement.
What happens when someone actually raises a red flag?
You can train every board member in Jacksonville to recognize fraud, questionable spending, weak internal controls and financial warning signs.
But what good is all that training if the person who asks the uncomfortable question gets treated like the problem?
Jacksonville needs a strong and trusted whistleblower process — one that protects board members, employees and others who raise legitimate concerns.
People should not be ridiculed, marginalized or shot in the foot because they noticed something wasn’t right.
Megan Hayward comes to mind.
So does another group of people whose job is to ask uncomfortable questions: the media.
Mayor Deegan knows that world better than most. She spent years in local journalism.
And Jacksonville’s local media did some excellent work digging into what was happening at JTA. Reporters asked questions, followed documents and brought issues into the sunlight.
They were doing exactly what we expect good journalists to do.
That is why I found it surprising when some of those warnings appeared to be waved away.
When someone brings you troubling information, the first response from leadership shouldn’t be, How do we make this person go away?
It should be:
Show me what you found.
The Mayor’s own executive order talks about helping government leaders identify risks early.
Sometimes the early-warning system is an auditor. Sometimes it is a board member. Sometimes it is an employee.
And sometimes it is a reporter.
We need to listen to all of them.
So, Mayor Deegan, I think your executive order is a good move. Keep going.
Let’s appoint people with experience.
Let’s make sure they are people of integrity who understand public service.
Let’s train them.
Let’s give every major board a strong governance policy manual.
Let’s establish clear whistleblower protections.
And most importantly, let’s create a culture where asking hard questions is considered part of the job — not an act of disloyalty.
Because financial training should be the floor, not the qualification.
And a good résumé should be the beginning of the vetting process — not the end of it.
Jacksonville needs board members who understand the numbers, understand their responsibilities and understand who they work for.
The public.
And when one of them spots a red flag, we need leaders who won’t shoot the person waving it.
NOTE: If you are interested in reviewing the JEA Policy Governance you can access it at www.jea.com – About – Board Management – and then click on JEA Board Policy Manual 2025
