City Council members want answers from former Jacksonville Transportation AuthorityCEO Nat Ford about what caused back-to-back years of red-ink spending that is forcing deep layoffs and transit service cuts as Ford is set to leave Jacksonville for a new job in Texas.
Council member Rory Diamond said City Council cannot do a full review without "asking the guy who was in charge of all this."
"I think the people of Jacksonville deserve to hear that and I don't care what state he's in," Diamond said Oct. 15 during a meeting of the council's Financial Audit and Oversight Select Committee. "I think he should voluntarily come here and speak to us and just be honest about what happened."
Ford is scheduled to start work Oct. 26 as CEO of the Dallas Area
Rapid Transit agency and is continuing to draw his CEO-level salary from JTA through Oct. 21 while serving as an as-needed advisor to interim CEO Cleveland Ferguson. City Council members have heard presentations from Ferguson, who became interim CEO on Aug. 27, about the financial crisis but Ford hasn't been at those meetings.
Ford did not respond to a Times-Union question sent through the JTA communications office about whether he would answer questions from the Financial Audit and Oversight Select Committee.
After the select committee heard a blow-by-blow account at its Oct. 15 meeting about how JTA increased spending by tens of millions of dollars beyond its revenue during the 2024-25 and 2025-26 fiscal years, committee Chair Chris Miller said posing questions to Ford makes sense. He said Ford should welcome the opportunity to speak about what happened while he was responsible for JTA.
"If I'm him, I want to come back and say, 'Okay, here's what I knew, here's what I did, here's why I did it, here's who was involved' and have that transparent process with our committee, with our council and with our people overall because I think they deserve a transparent process," Miller said. "It also gives us his side of the story."
![Jacksonville Transportation Authority CEO Nat Ford talks about how the nation's first autonomous vehicle service called NAVI, which is short for Neighborhood Autonomous Vehicle Innovation, is ready to launch, Friday June 27, 2025. The launch will take place on Monday June 30, 2025. [Doug Engle/Florida Times-Union]](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/authoring/authoring-images/2025/06/27/NFTU/84392754007-jki-autonomousvehicleride-jacksonville-navi-004.JPG)
City Council and Attorney General both examining JTA finances
The Financial Audit and Oversight Select Committee is one of two ongoing examinations of JTA covering the final years of Ford's tenure as CEO.
The Florida Attorney General's Office opened an investigation in Septemberand recently sent a second subpoena for more financial records and also communications by Ford with Ferguson, Mayor Donna Deegan and the mayor's staff, and with JTA Board Chair Aundra Wallace.
The subpoena seeks records pertaining to several JTA contracts with outside businesses, travel expenses logged by JTA administrators including Ford and Ferguson, and sponsorships of various nonprofits, events and businesses.
The Florida Attorney General also issued a subpoena earlier this month to Deegan's office for notes taken during a meeting in early 2025 between her and former JTA board member Megan Hayward about some concerns raised by Hayward about JTA.
Deegan's office responded to that subpoena by giving the Attorney General a page of handwritten notes. JTA has an Oct. 30 deadline to comply with the two subpoenas it has received.
During Ford's tenure as CEO that started in December 2012, JTA developed a system of busways for express service and greatly expanded bus shelters. The agency widened Kernan Boulevard, Girvin Road, San Pablo Road, Alta Drive and Collins Road while extending Parramore Road.
JTA successfully took over operating the St. Johns River Ferry and developed technology making it the first agency in the nation for deploying self-driving shuttles as part of its regular fare-paying transit system.
JTA posted surpluses during the first 12 fiscal years of Ford's tenure. Then it veered widely the other way over the past two years.
Council member: JTA suffered from 'bad basic financial operations'
The Jacksonville Transportation Authority board — comprised of four members appointed by the governor and three by the mayor — votes on a budget it each year and sends it to City Hall for City Council's approval.
City Council approved a $158 million budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year that JTA went over by spending $177 million. For the 2025-26 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, City Council approved a $162.4 million budget and JTA is projected to end the year spending $176.8 million.
City Council Auditor Phillip Peterson said the three main drivers of higher spending in the 2025-26 budget were the cost of operating the NAVI autonomous transit shuttle system in downtown, the lack of funding in the budget for a full year of operating the Connexion and Connexion Plus service for riders with disabilities, and a shortage of money in the budget for covering employee fringe benefits.
JTA also dealt with a drop in sales tax revenue that created a double whammy for the 2025-26 budget.
Over the past two years, JTA has pulled about $51 million from its financial reserves.
"There was just some bad budgeting and some bad basic financial operations," City Council member Will Lahnen said as he listened to Peterson's presentation.
Peterson said his office does not have access to JTA's financial system so it must rely on data and projections from JTA that the auditor's office examines. Those projections have landed far off target.
JTA told the City Council Auditor's Office in a July 20, 2025 report it expected to finish the 2024-25 fiscal year with a $3.9 million surplus. Three months later, JTA told the City Council Auditor it finished the year with a nearly $19 million deficit.
In February, the JTA board made $14.2 million in budget cuts that Ford said were needed to ensure JTA would end the fiscal year with a balanced budget in wake of sales tax revenue falling.
After Randall Barnes joined JTA as chief financial officer in July 20, he dug into the agency's finances and said in a quarterly report to the City Council Auditor' Office that JTA was headed to a nearly $32 million deficit when the fiscal year ended Sept. 30.
City Council members said they want to find out whether JTA administrators gave board members accurate financial information for them to make informed decisions or if board members were not getting the full story.
City Council member Ron Salem said the select committee should talk to board members who served recently as chair in order to find out what financial data they were receiving from JTA administrators.
"We need to hear from them as well to understand what they were thinking because something went astray here," Salem said.
The DART board decided July 21 on a split vote to hire Ford as its next CEO. At Ford's last JTA board meeting in the CEO seat on Aug. 27, he said the JTA board gave agency leadership the ability to "take the appropriate risks to advance transportation, not just for today but for generations going into the future."
"We're hitting a rough spot at this point," Ford said. "We'll get past this rough spot and then we will advance back onto our mission in terms of the bold, courageous transportation needs of this community."
Three weeks later, Ferguson announced that JTA would lay off up to 194 employees, cut lower-ridership bus routes and scale back frequency for some other routes, and "pause" the downtown Skyway service in November and the NAVI autonomous transit shuttles after the end of December.
"It is painful," Ferguson told City Council on Oct. 9. "It is difficult, but it is our professional responsibility to let the board know immediately, let our colleagues know and to get in the room and figure out how we're going to right-size this organization.'
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: City Council wants answers from outgoing JTA CEO Nat Ford
