City Council members approved a subpoena that would compel outgoing Jacksonville Transportation Authority head Nat Ford to answer questions about why the bottom fell out on the agency's finances, but council members said they hope Ford will appear voluntarily so the subpoena won't be necessary.
The Finance Committee of City Council voted for a subpoena calling on Ford to appear on Oct. 23 to field questions, three days before he is slated to start as CEO of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit agency.
City Council member Rory Diamond, who made the motion for the subpoena at an Oct. 20 meeting of the Finance Committee, said determining what went wrong at JTA must ask questions of Ford since he was CEO during the two-year period when JTA racked up tens
of millions of dollars in deficit spending.
Diamond said before Ford goes to Dallas, he should explain why JTA stayed on a budget path that is forcing deep cuts to transit services — including elimination of some bus routes and reduced frequency on others — along with a round of layoffs that will affect 200 JTA employees "who did nothing wrong but show up for work."
He said City Council must question Ford so "everybody who lost their job, everybody who now can't get to work or school as efficiently as they used to, and frankly all the taxpayers and ratepayers in Jacksonville can get answers from the horse's mouth."
While the subpoena uses an Oct. 23 date, council members said they would be willing to schedule another date for Ford if he will appear voluntarily before the Finance Committee or the Financial Audit and Oversight Select Committee to take questions.
"He's always answered them in the past, to be fair," Diamond said after the Finance Committee meeting. "That being said, if for some reason he doesn't, then we have the subpoena power in our back pocket."
![Chief Executive Officer Nat Ford, with Jacksonville Transportation Authority, spoke at the JTA ceremony marking the completion of its Autonomous Innovation Center Thursday April 17, 2025 in Jacksonville, Fla . [Doug Engle/Florida Times-Union]](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/authoring/authoring-images/2025/04/17/NFTU/83143088007-041725-jki-jta-autonomous-innovation-center-17.JPG)
City Council President Nick Howland supported the Finance Committee's vote on the subpoena. He said City Council needs to understand from Ford how JTA prepared the financial projections that were so far off the mark when they went to JTA board members and the City Council Auditor's Office.
"This council does need to get to the bottom of how we got where we are so we can figure out how to fix what we have moving forward," Howland said at the Finance Committee meeting.
He said bringing Ford come before City Council "isn't a witch hunt" and the Select Committee wasn't set up to operate in that way.
"He ran this agency for the last decade so we need to hear from him how it went," Howland said. "I suspect, because I'm a bit of a Pollyanna — I always have wishful thinking — that he did nothing wrong. But I'd like to understand where it went wrong and for us to understand that, we need Nat Ford's testimony."
After the Dallas Area Rapid Transit board voted July 21 to hire Ford as its next CEO with a starting date of Oct. 26, the JTA board promoted Cleveland Ferguson to interim CEO on Aug. 27. Ford has continued to draw his CEO-level salary from JTA through Oct. 21 while serving in the role of as-needed advisor to Ferguson.
Howland said he left an Oct. 20 voice mail message with Ford about coming before the committee. City Council member Chris Miller, who is chair of the select committee, sent a written request later in the day to Ford.
City Council member Rahman Johnson, who cast the lone vote in the Finance Committee against the subpoena, said council should give more time for Ford to respond.
"I just want to be fair and I think this is a totally unfair thing to do to jump from request to subpoena within hours," Johnson said.
City Council member Ron Salem, who serves on the select committee, told Finance Committee members he also is concerned about the fast timeline for issuing the subpoena. He said before calling on Ford to answer questions, City Council should talk to people who worked for him such as in the post of chief financial officer "when things went south."
"And then depending on what they tell us, if they were directed to do something with the books that wasn't appropriate, then obviously it goes up," Salem said.
Salem noted that the state Attorney General's Office of Statewide Prosecution has issued subpoenas to JTA that include requests for communications by Ford. Salem said Ford's attorneys might advise him against appearing before City Council while the Attorney General has an investigation underway.
Salem said City Council could work with the City Council Auditor's Office to develop a list of written questions for Ford.
Diamond said he usually would agree with Salem's approach of working up the chain of command in the review but in the case of Ford, the timing is different because Ford is on the verge of leaving JTA for a job in Dallas. He said the subpoena should be issued while Ford still is a JTA employee and it would be a "strategic mistake by the committee if we waited."
He said if Ford tells City Council he cannot appear on Oct. 23, the council will be "rational and reasonable" about scheduling another time for him.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: City Council will subpoena Nat Ford to face questions about JTA crisis
