Donna Deegan’s incompetence has gotten on my last good nerve.
JTA is circling the drain and Jacksonville is paying the tab. Nearly $40 million in the hole, almost 200 people getting pink slips, Skyway parked, NAVI mothballed, buses cut back to Saturday schedules, and a stack of delinquent bills stretching back years.
The outgoing CEO still collects a fat paycheck while the agency he left behind begs City Hall for a $30 million gas-tax lifeline.
That is not a rough patch. That is a wreck.
Meanwhile the mayor’s orbit keeps drawing subpoenas like a magnet.
State prosecutors and the AG have already gone fishing through city and utility records over board games, lobbying contracts, immigration livestreams, and more.
Whether the latest paper lands on JTA letterhead or the next authority over, the pattern is the same: sloppy oversight, political score-settling, and an administration that treats independent agencies like personal chess pieces until the money runs out and riders get stranded.
Donna Deegan promised to clean up the “toxic culture.”
Instead Jacksonville got grant money left on the table, service cuts for working people who actually use the bus, and another round of lawyers reading emails.
The city needed a mayor who could run the trains and the books. It got press conferences and investigations.
That’s the failure.