All right, we're going to start here in just a little bit, but Jason Teal is supposed to be here. So, Mr. Foote, please call Mr. Teal. That's what we're putting the search committee out. We could issue a subpoena. What's the notice for that? Yay. Yay. We have one motion in a second. Okay, he's here. There he is. All right. We almost had to issue a subpoena for you, sir. Yeah. No, it's not a laughing matter. We would have done it. All right. All right. Good afternoon, everybody. This is a little finance workshop, but obviously it's for anyone who wants to attend. Councilmember Howland isn't able to attend. He's not feeling well today, so he will be listening in just for whatever that's worth. So, we'll start with introductions, but really all we're here to do is kind of get just an overall idea of what the Special Investigative Committee has been doing for those of us who haven't been able to follow along super, super closely for the day-to-day. I've obviously seen things in the news and read about it, but the exact information I just wanted all of us to hear from Mr. Teal, and obviously we have two of the SIC committee members on finance as well joining us. So, just to kind of flesh out any questions, kind of get an idea of how did we get to this point where we're at today, and so on and so forth. So, we'll start with introductions to the left, and then we'll go to Mr. Teal, and we'll go from there. Colleen Hampsey, Council Research. Mary Stifopoulos, Office of General Counsel. Phillip Peterson, Council Auditor's Office. Kim Taylor, Council Auditor. Good morning, Roy Diamond, District 13, The Beaches. Ron Salem, Group 2 at Large. Willem, District 3. Joe Carlucci, District 5. Good morning, Roy Ares, District 11. Good morning, Michael Boyle, District 6, just visiting. All right, good deal. So, with that, we will kind of go ahead and allow Mr. Teal really as much time as you need. Did we notice this for a certain end time, Ms. Stifopoulos? Okay, okay, cool. Mr. Chair, you have until 11.45. Okay, awesome. So, we'll go to Mr. Teal, and then we'll bring it back for discussion and questions, and yeah, take it away. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Jason Teal, City Council Secretary and Legislative Council. So, I'm going to have about 20 minutes, probably, to save plenty of time. If you have questions or if Council Member Salem or Council Member Diamond wants to weigh in on anything that they think needs to be expanded on. But basically, what this is, is that the Council President created the Special Investigative Committee on JEA on March 11th, and it originated with a request from the Inspector General for the Council to investigate the JEA's failure to appropriately collect capacity fees from developers whose developments exceeded their, or expanded their developments by greater than 20% over what they were originally approved for, what they originally paid into the capacity fee fund for, and separately from that issue, there was a separate issue with regard to allegations that were made to the JEA board by one of their board members about complaints of a toxic work environment and racism that's against Vicki Cavey, who is JEA's CEO. And after the JEA board failed to conduct an investigation into the allegation, that charge was also added to the SIC's charge in its original charging document of March 11th. Now, part of the SIC process, there was information received separately about a proposed combined cycle electric generation facility, or plant, that JEA had committed a $350 million non-refundable deposit, for which JEA had not yet received any regulatory approvals to construct, and so at the request of the SIC on April 25th, or 23rd rather, the Council President amended and expanded the SIC's charge to investigate the combined cycle plant as well. So there's three issues going on with the SIC. There's the toxic work environment, there's the capacity fee issue, and there's the combined cycle plant issue. So as part of its work, the SIC has met five times between March 17th and May 11th. And you have in front of you a bunch of documents that I had copied for you that I think were relative to the SIC's process. I don't have those. Nicky, did you have those? We now have those. Okay. And so what's part of that package I'll talk about is, first of all, the two SIC charging documents from the Council President, the meeting minutes from all five of the SIC meetings, and then there's other documents that have also been, are also being distributed to you that I'll explain as I'm going through my presentation. So the capacity fee issue stemmed from an investigation from the Inspector General during which he interviewed Regina Ross, who was the Office of General Counsel's attorney assigned to JEA. She was a chief legal officer. She was embedded at JEA. So she was there on a day-to-day basis, and she was all things JEA. And I believe she had reporting to her, I think, three other attorneys, might be four other attorneys, to handle the JEA's legal work. So OGC's legal team was embedded at JEA. And she authored, Regina Ross authored a memo that detailed the fact that JEA had failed to appropriately collect capacity fees from developers and landowners, business owners, whose projects had grown beyond the original, originally calculated JEA water usage rates. And there was an initial request from Councilmember Salem, who was the chair of the, or is the chair of the SIC, to meet with Ms. Ross. However, Mr. Fackler of the General Counsel intervened and, in essence, prevented any conversations with Ms. Ross or participation by Ms. Ross in the SIC process due to concerns about attorney-client privilege and confidentiality with her Florida bar license. There's restrictions on what attorneys can discuss and can't discuss. In response to that, based upon the SIC's understanding of Ms. Ross's testimony and the importance of her testimony, Councilmember Salem and Mr. Fackler devised a workaround whereby the Council auditor would be able to have discussions and questions submitted to Mr. Fackler, who would then go back and ask Ms. Ross what the answer was, and then go back and communicate, report back to the auditors what Ms. Ross's answers were. And then that would prompt additional questions from the auditors, which would be presented to Mr. Fackler, go back to Ms. Ross, and it was this whole arrangement that was set up. But when the cumbersome process was explained to the SIC, the SIC caused a formal request to the JEA board to waive the attorney-client privilege to give the ability for Ms. Ross to fully participate in the SIC's process. And you've got a copy of the request for the waiver of attorney-client privilege and new materials. And separately, at the same time, the SIC instructed a letter to be produced to JEA for what's called a document hold letter. And so what that is, is it's a normal practice during any investigation. You want the agency to hold and maintain all of their documents. So the SIC issued a formal request to JEA so that no relevant documents would be destroyed or misplaced or, you know, whatever, it wouldn't be available to the SIC. So that letter went over to JEA as well. Now back to the attorney-client waiver request. That was heard by the JEA board at its workshop on April 14th, and the JEA board denied the request. So they failed to waive the privilege to allow Ms. Ross to be able to participate in this whole thing. Now, separately, as part of the SIC's process, is the culture issue, the toxic work environment issue. Council Member Salem and I researched and had conversations with multiple employee satisfaction survey companies that are out there. And we ultimately selected a company called Selection Link, based on their extensive experience with government agencies, as well as their experience with conducting surveys with utmost attention to anonymity. That was important of the respondents and their experience in targeted investigations related to toxic work culture and racism. And as you'll recall, the council approved that contract last Tuesday. So we're moving forward with that survey. Now, at the time that the survey discussions were being had by the SIC, there was a discussion, there was a JEA board member, other members came to the SIC and indicated that the SIC should disengage from its employee satisfaction survey, from conducting the survey, due to the fact that JEA was simultaneously conducting an investigation into the allegations against Ms. Cavey, as well as a JEA wide employee satisfaction survey. So they were conducting their own survey, which has came out during the testimony. They routinely do every two years. Last one was in 2024. This one's in 2026. It's over 2000 employees. It's we have received a copy of the questions that they asked. And it was just general, you know, do you feel like you're being supported in your work? Do you feel like your duties match your job description? It's you know, those kinds of just generic, we call them temperature check type of survey. And so the SIC considered all of that, as well as that we heard a lot of information about the extreme distrust by the JEA employees about participating in their own survey, because of the fact of being honest in their own survey, because they felt like there was a real possibility of retribution. Apparently that had come out after the 2024 survey, some people found out who submitted various comments and there was some retribution that apparently happened or allegedly happened in response to that. So there was this, this environment of distrust over there with with being honest to JEA. And so the SIC determined, secondly, that they determined that the temperature check wasn't going to get the job done, that there really needed to be a targeted survey that focused on those employees that have direct interaction with the CEO, because not every line worker or every utility worker, you know, regularly interacts with the CEO. And so it was important to have a targeted survey, not only targeted with the the people who would respond to the survey, but targeted to the questions that were asked. We needed to focus on what is your work environment? Has Ms. Cavey, you know, done anything or said anything, or you've heard, you know, her saying anything or doing anything, in order to really address the questions of the allegations that that were presented to the JEA board by one of their members, as well as separate information that the SIC committee members had received outside of that process. And so they made that determination that no, we do feel it's important to go forward with with the council survey, we feel like people will be more forthright if they know that that information is not going back to JEA. And as you know, based upon an amendment to the survey legislation, the idea there is to just gather data and have their experts, you know, kind of calculate it out and draw some maybe some conclusions or point to some trends, but that that information is given to JEA, the JEA board specifically to do a presentation to the JEA board for those results. But it was determined that it was really important that the council remains separate from the JEA survey for the reasons that I just mentioned. Now, on the capacity fee issue, oh, I should mention that it's expected that the timeframe for completion of the survey will be late June or early July at the latest. And so we do feel like that it will be conducted in a reasonable amount of time. On the capacity fee issue, the council auditors reported to the SIC that they had conducted interviews with over 10 JEA employees. I think they mentioned 13 JEA employees in order to gain an understanding of the issues associated with a calculation of exactly how much in capacity fee arrearages exist. And so now I think that they've got at least should have direct access to JEA's information in order to begin their calculations and their data gathering and to understand, you know, how much capacity fees have remained unpaid and are due and owing. I should mention that there was a legal issue that was raised with regard to the capacity fee issue, which was whether or not there's a statute of limitations that may apply as far as what JEA can actually go back and collect, how far back JEA can actually go back and collect. That was presented to the SIC. They evaluated that. But the determination was, look, we need to understand what the universe is of the amount of fees that is actually or would have been owed to JEA, regardless of whether it's collectible or not. We needed a better understanding of how much in these fees did JEA not collect over the years. And so the SIC requested the auditors to calculate the amounts of arrearages for as far back as was possible in order for the SIC to understand the total amount that JEA failed to collect, regardless of how much was ultimately deemed collectible. Now, in an effort to fully explore the SIC's charges, the committee requested the appearance of certain witnesses from JEA, Diane Mosher, who's the JEA head of HR, Jody Brooks, who's the JEA CAO, and Vicki Cavey, who is the CEO, in addition to Ms. Ross, which I'll get to in a minute. But Ms. Mosher and Ms. Brooks were originally scheduled to appear at the SIC's April 27th meeting. And Ms. Mosher was originally scheduled for the May 11th meeting. I'm sorry, I had that backwards. Ms. Mosher appeared at the April 27th meeting, and Ms. Brooks was originally scheduled to appear at the May 11th meeting. Ms. Mosher appeared on April 27th as scheduled. She was questioned by the SIC. At that meeting, Council Member Pittman read into the record several letters that she had received concerning racism issues and the toxic culture. I won't really get so much into that, but if you're interested in the substance of those letters, I would encourage you to review the video from the April 27th meeting. Now, while Ms. Mosher appeared as agreed on May 6th, I received an email from Ms. Brooks to cancel her appearance on May 11th, and she further indicated that neither she nor Ms. Kavey would be available until over a month later at a couple of dates in June. And you have in your materials the entire email correspondence between Ms. Kavey, Ms. Brooks, and me concerning the scheduling attempts. Now, Ms. Ross appeared at the SIC on May 11th to inform the SIC about her consultation with the Florida Bar, about what she could or couldn't discuss in that type of environment, and whether she was able to testify at all before the SIC with regard to her representation of JEA. Now, while she was informed by the Bar that she was prevented from testifying about all matters concerning her work at JEA, unless she was compelled to attend. So unless she was actually subpoenaed to attend, she couldn't really get into anything that she observed while she was with JEA. But what the Bar clarified is that if she is under a subpoena, then she's free to testify about all matters other than those that are deemed privileged under the definition with the Florida Bar. And that's, in essence, a pretty broad definition, but it's legal advice that she gave her client. You know, discussions that she had with her client that led to the giving of legal advice. But what it doesn't include, and what she would be able to testify about, is those things that she just observed personally. You know, did she observe anything with regard to the toxic environment or, you know, interaction with any employees that came to her as their lawyer? You know, not, well, in the course of her legal representation of them, but just, you know, things that they would have said to her about the way people were treated. She can testify about public documents that she had public records that she produced, for example, her legal memo. You know, what did you mean by this in your memo? What did you mean by that in your memo? Those are the kinds of things that we feel like she would be able to testify about. So, in response to Ms. Ross indicating that she needed to be compelled to testify via subpoena, and Ms. Brooks and Ms. Cavey, their non-availability for over a month, the SIC requested that subpoenas be issued to compel the appearance of all three of those witnesses. Now, different reasons, you know, Ms. Ross from Ms. Brooks and Ms. Cavey, but, and I believe that you've got pending today the three subpoenas at the Finance Committee. However, the SIC did select dates for their appearances to coincide with the dates that both Ms. Brooks said she was available on June 8th, and the date that Ms. Cavey said she was available on June 22nd. And so, you know, so the purpose of the subpoenas is basically, hey, you said you were available on these dates. We're going to hold your feet to the fire so that you can show up when you said that you would be there originally. Now, Ms. Ross is also available on both of those dates. And so, I think that that's the request for the subpoena is that, you know, she appear on both June 8th and June 22nd, if necessary. In essence, the thought process there was is that Ms. Brooks would testify. Ms. Ross would have the ability to hear that testimony. And then, you know, if there was any inconsistencies or differences from the way she remembered or asking her questions about things that Ms. Brooks or Ms. Cavey brought up, she would be available to do that. It was also determined that the SIC needed certain documents concerning various issues within the sixth charge. And that included the proposed settlement that Ms. Cavey was pursuing with Mayo Clinic, whether or not the board was ever advised of those proposed settlement agreements, whether or not the board needed to be advised, or whether Ms. Cavey had independent authority to enter those types of settlement agreements. The attempts by other documents include the attempts by certain JEA employees to calculate capacity fees owed to JEA. Our understanding is that two JEA employees were tasked with calculating how much incapacity fees were owed to JEA. They were reassigned, demoted, disciplined in response to something, which we'll have to figure out. But the bottom line is they're no longer on that project. And so we wanted to understand what was associated with that. When did they start looking into the capacity fee issue? When did JEA first have notice of the capacity fee issue? And then other topics related to the SIC's investigation, including, you know, complaints that were made regarding the toxic work environment, complaints that HR or the board had received with regard to any racism or anything else. And that's all part of the subpoenas that we're requesting as well. So I think that catches you all up. However, I am happy to explain any of that further or to answer any questions that you all might have. All right. Well, let's go ahead and get our questions answered. We've got a full queue. And then I did promise Mr. Fackler I would give him a few minutes as well to just speak and something that he'd like to bring up. So we'll go through the queue for questions. We'll start with, oh, we want to welcome Council Member Matt Carlucci for joining us as well. So I don't think any, okay, we have no one else to join. All right. So we'll go to Council Member Salem. Thank you, Chair. I just want to make two or three points and I want to save as much time for questions as we can. When this first came up a month or six weeks ago, I had a call from the Inspector General. I met with the Inspector General, which was after he had met with Regina Ross. Regina Ross did meet with the Inspector General. He indicated to me, and I don't want to get into a private discussion, but clearly the capacity issue was one that he felt like the Council should look at. Number two, we had a discussion about some of the environmental issues at JEA that he heard from not only Ms. Ross, but from that February JEA board meeting, where they didn't take any action. They suggested employees that had problems go to HR, go to the Inspector General, go to the Human Rights Commission, and he had employees from JEA that came to him. We had a discussion about that. So when the President had asked me to take this on, I was very comfortable where I was and what I'd heard from the Inspector General to move forward with this process. The other point that I want to make that I've heard that it's just the auditors working on the capacity issue. I had several discussions with Mr. Fackler orchestrating this process where the auditors could get the information they needed in this roundabout way, and that's pretty much been completed now. I think they are now able to dig into the numbers, but there was considerable discussion. The other point that's very important to me that came up was the statute of limitations on the capacity issue. I think Mr. Diamond and I about leaped out of our chairs when this came up at the SIC meeting because it's very important to me that we have the total picture of how far this goes back. What the JEA board does with that information is entirely up to them, whether they have some statute of limitations or handle it in some way. I think the public needs to understand the total dollars involved in this, how far it goes back, and then let the JEA board handle it. It's just like our survey. We're going to get those results. We're going to turn it over to the JEA board, and they will take the appropriate action. That's not up to the council. They're responsible for operations of the JEA, and we will provide that information to them, but please understand their survey is a temperature check survey. It does not get into the specifics of what we're going to get into now. I should also mention they do have a a law firm that's going around and meeting with individual employees about the culture. I don't know what that firm has found thus far. I'm assuming that will be reported to the board whenever that process is completed. They may pick up some stuff from that. I don't know. I think I just wanted to make sure everyone understood where I was and where the committee was and why we're where we are. Thank you. Appreciate that. And just for anyone else in the queue, what we're really wanting to discuss in the workshop, and Council Member Salem's here for any additional questions, but it's mainly focused on the subpoenas because that's something that we'll be taking action on in finance committee. So I want to just allow this opportunity for everyone to kind of get a sense of who, what, when, where, why type of questions answered before we get to our very long committee that we have today as well. So Council Member Landon, you're recognized. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for setting this up because a lot of us, I mean, we've been getting kind of the the bullet points from the sick meetings in the media. I wanted to hear it from Council Members Salem and Diamond and Ms. Pittman unfortunately can't be here. So a number of thoughts or questions actually for a combination of probably Mr. Teal and our members. I think to date the only thing I've said publicly is just my continued support for Arthur Adams. I know that's not a discussion now, but again, being a newcomer to the government world in 2023, it's rare that I've had people I've worked with closely in my past be on an important board like this. So I do hope that there's a way we can find a way to keep Mr. Adams on the board, very, very talented person, and he would not have gone through the hassle of getting the CSX CEO up to that level to okay him participating in this if he thought he was going to do it only one year. One of my questions is, so on the subpoena through the Chair and Mr. Teal, so basically they were going to come, last minute they didn't come. The subpoena now is basically extra emphasis to come on the date you told us you are now available, right? Like the subpoena is not for a random date. It's for a date they said that they are available, and given that they didn't show up when they said they would the first time, this is an additional motivation, if you will, to make sure they show up this next time that they said they're available, correct? Through the Chair to Council Member Landon. So the initial outreach that I did with Vicki Cavey, I reached out to her twice to schedule her, never heard back from her. In response to those, when I did hear back, she said she was available. The first date she said she was available was that June 22nd date, but yes, you're exactly right. That's dates that they gave us that there was that they were available. The purpose of the subpoena is just basically make sure that they show up on those dates. Through Chair, thank you, Mr. Teal, and to the to the SIC members, Council Member Salem and Diamond. So June 22nd, do we have a feel for when we think we will wrap up the committee? I know it can be open-ended, but is it a potential that this June 22nd meeting is the last one because then we go on recess, council presidency? Just trying to get a feel for when we are going to say this is over. I had a plan to finish this by June 30th before all these delays occurred. Clearly the witnesses we have scheduled at this point are the only witnesses we have scheduled. Unless something comes up from the witnesses that we have scheduled, I could see the witness part of this ending on June 22nd. The capacity issue part of this may roll into July. One of the reasons it was very important to me to issue these subpoenas was to make sure for the reason you just stated, we're taking two weeks off, then we get into the budget process. So I wanted to get as much of this completed as we can. The presentation on the combined cycle is June 8th as well. So I think there's a pretty good chance we will wrap most of this up by the end of June, may flow into July to some extent, and I'll allow the next president to decide whether he wants to extend it for a month or so, or find some other way to pull all this together. Through the chair, thank you Dr. Salem. And through the chair to Mr. Thiel, regarding the council directed survey, we will not have those results you said back. It'll be well after the June 22nd date, right? Through the chair to Council Verlander, they indicated to me that they would have the results back by late June, early July. So well after, probably not, but you know, it may be a week or two after. Through the chair, thank you for that, Mr. Thiel. So again, I'll support this. Again, I think this whole process would have gone faster if one, you were able to speak more at one of the board meetings that kind of was at the very beginning of this. And two, if they had shown up on the originally agreed upon dates, we'd probably be closer to making June 30th a more likely ending date. I will say the thing that has my most interest is with no surprise, right, I'm the numbers guy, the billing. So I do think that's probably the thing that I want to be sure we completely run to ground and have the right amount of oversight on that, given that it is going to be potentially a large dollar amount. So I think that is all of my questions for now. And thank you for your time, Mr. Thiel. All right. Council Member Diamond, you're recognized. I'll be really brief because I want, there's only 15 minutes left, so I'll do less than 90 seconds. So just at 40,000 feet, you know, when we did the original sick in 2019, it was very contentious. I mean, people are in jail right now because of the stuff that we found in that process and turned over to the feds. This is not contentious process. This is literally just trying to get some answers to questions that I think people in Jacksonville wanted to know. So there was these, these allegations just started shooting out racism, toxic work environment, uncollected fees, all this other stuff. And the easy way to do it is to have had Mr. Salem just had his questions answered at the board meeting and for JEA just to kind of like address all these things. Instead of that happening, and then, and then had a clear path for their employees to say, hey, I got a problem, right? And be listened to. And that didn't happen. And anytime that doesn't happen, when people aren't just like very eager to stand up there, like JTA, I have grilled them. Nat Ford stands at that podium and he answers very tough questions for me at JTA. That's all I was personally looking for. Let's answer, ask the questions. When you don't get that kind of transparency, that's when my spidey senses start to explode. And that's why I was like, okay, let's just get some subpoenas on deck here. And all, and I issue subpoenas all the time. And it's really just to make sure people can show up. That's one. And two, it gives an employee cover so that they can say, I'm compelled by the court ultimately to show up. And for Ms. Ross, that's absolutely required. She needs it. In order to be honest and talk about it, she needs a subpoena. So to me, again, I love the transparency. I love just getting questions answered. And we're the elected body. I think just a check-in like this is absolutely healthy with something as important, especially when you see rates going up and up and up. And just as far as like product, stuff that we've already gotten, one, we're getting fidelity on the combined cycle plan and the risk associated with it. I think if we did nothing else, that's important. Two, we found out that senior executives were getting paid to do nothing, right? So that sunshine coming in is super helpful. Three, we are making sure that employees have a route to say, hey, there's a problem here. And we'll just get an answer, whether it's good or bad on the assessment. I just want to say from 40,000 feet, this is just about getting questions answered. It should be non-controversial. This is easy stuff. All right. Thank you. And Council Member Arias, you're recognized. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Speaking about getting questions answered, one of the few questions that I have, and I want to make sure that they get answered. I'm not sure if these questions were already asked, but during the upcoming meetings on the 27th of June, when Ms. Cavey will be here, are we going to be able to, through the chair to Mr. T, are we going to be able to know what the figure amount was that was uncollected by then? Or are we still going to have to wait till the July for that part? That's one. And then the second part is, are we also going to know who benefited from not being charged these capacity fees? Many times I get calls from a lot of business owners, a lot of them, saying, can you please help me out? We're paying too much in capacity fees. Are we even being charged accurately? Why so much money for a small 1,200 square foot unit? And so these people are paying with their life savings. And then to have larger entities that could easily write that check, not pay it, that's really disheartening. And it doesn't really show good faith for our small business community. So I want to make sure that I know who these entities are that are benefiting from it, because I'm pretty sure they're not small businesses, they're larger corporations. And then also, I want to know, when should we expect these capacity numbers? I know you mentioned that there were two individuals working on it, and they either got demoted or reassigned. Has that process, has it been halted, or is it continuing still? And so that's what I want to know. During the subpoena, we're going to get those questions answered. Okay. I don't think that is, you can answer that for 30 seconds, but I think the subpoenas are more of a issuing requirement to appear. But if you want to take 30 seconds and answer some of his questions, you can, or y'all can talk about it later. So as far as the timing in terms of the, when we're going to get the numbers or find out more of that, that's more of the auditors. As far as, you know, when they think they may have, you know, enough meat on the bone, if you will, that's not a dollar certainty as to, to calculate. I know it's a very complicated process, because we're dealing with decades of time, and the landscape has changed a little bit in there. As far as, you know, the other issues, I think that, that's the goal here. And we won't know until we get those questions asked of, for example, Ms. Brooks, as far as these two employees, you know, what were they tasked to do? One of the, the documents that we've asked for, it involves those employees, as far as when they started working on it, how they started working on it, you know, those kinds of things. So we'll hopefully get a better picture of that. We should have all of that back, if Ms. Brooks is here on June 8th, you know, at that meeting. All right, we'll go to last speaker in the queue, Council Member Boylan, and then we will hear from Mr. Fackler, and we will, go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chair, I appreciate the opportunity. I've got a couple of questions from Mr. Thiel, and they are related to the rationale for the subpoena. Number one, is there documented evidence as to the percentage of employees who detrust the JA survey, to warrant that kind of statement? Through the Chair to Council Member Boylan, all we know is, is what we're hearing. Now, is that a, you know, statistical calculation? No, it's absolutely not. Do we have any sense of how many participated in past surveys, percentage-wise? I do have the, I do have the results of the 2024 survey. I don't know off the top of my head what the percentage of the employees were that participated, but I can certainly get that. I think that's helpful to understand, to give either context or, you know, affirmation to your, the affirmation, the contention that they don't trust them. Number two, is there documented evidence with respect to the number of employees who have complained about the toxic work environment? Through the Chair, Council Member Boylan. So the only evidence that we have of that is the JEA board meeting where they encouraged employees to, to go to HR. The chief of HR said that she had received no complaints, but we were also told by the then Chair, Minister DiSalvo, that, that they started their survey or their investigation because they had received a complaint in response after the board meeting. So, so there's conflicting evidence, uh, as far as, um, and that's just kind of one of the things we're trying to get to the bottom of, is, is how many complaints have actually been submitted. Speaking of conflicting evidence, I've talked to a number of senior managers who, to a person, said they did not see those incidents that Mr. Wilson spoke about. They were there and didn't experience them in the same fashion. Well, and since he, you know, he testified under oath, should he be called back here in order to clarify his position on that? Potentially. I think that's well within the sixth authority is as if they've, they've got conflicting evidence to call him back to try and explain. I would suggest that might be something there for the committee to consider. Last, as for your comments on the capacity piece about those two individuals who were quote unquote removed, it may, the way you, you commented on it, it sounded like you thought it was nefarious in the way they were removed. Can you make certain we understand that there could be a variety of reasons whether or not they were not sufficiently doing the work well or well enough? Uh, it's not just because they were trying to put something out there that the management was trying to hide. I, I mean, that's how it sounded to me when you said it. So if you could clarify that for me, I'd appreciate it. Sure. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through the chair to Councilmember Voiland. A lot of the stuff we're hearing is speculation. It's hearsay. It's, you know, um, not firsthand accounts. It's, uh, you know, it's a lot of smoke, right? What we're looking for is fire. Uh, and I think that, that that's important to, uh, to understand. I think it's also helpful though, to know or to, to recognize that the SIC or in the council is not going to be really taking any formal action with regard to this information. It's just going to be presented to the JEA board to say, Hey, these are the results. We, we heard all about the smoke. We did the survey to see if there was any fire. Here's the results you guys pursue as you see fit. Now they may look at it completely different than the council does, but I think the council has recognized it's the board's prerogative to, to, uh, um, to, to, to handle their employee however they see fit. So I think that's the intent is, is to just give them the information. If there's anything there, uh, and if there's not, then, you know, they'll, they'll act accordingly. And I very much appreciate the fact that, uh, the chair of the committee and others agreed to the fact that the survey information goes to the board and not to us for determination as to whether there is any validity to the issue. Thank you, Mr. Chair. All right. Thank you. Um, and just real quick, we're running a little thin on time, but Mr. Teo, you are going to bring copies of the subpoenas to the finance committee for us to see exactly what the request is for. Okay, great. Uh, council member McAuley, I can give you a one or two minutes, and then I promised Mr. Fackler, he would have three minutes. So yeah, I'd rather let my time go to Mr. Fackler. I just want to agree with what, uh, Mr. Borland said, and a lot of speculation has been treated as fact that I've watched, and I think it's been very unfair. But at this point, I'd like to, Mr. Fackler to have a chance to say what he'd like to say. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Fackler, come on down. Thank you, uh, board chair for, um, letting me have a, just a board chair. It's been a long day already. Um, chair. I don't envy that position right now. Um, I come today, not as your attorney, um, but as the head of the office of general counsel and as the employer of Regina Ross to make a request. It's not illegal. You can't do this. I recognize you do have the authority to subpoena Mr. Ross. My request is, and I respectfully submit that it's not good policy or a good precedent to be subpoena an attorney from my office to testify under oath in front of the sick. And there are two main reasons for that. First, it puts Ms. Ross in a terrible position. So she has ethical and legal obligations to protect the attorney client privilege. Every question will force Ms. Ross and one of our attorneys to parse that question to ensure that she can cooperate as she's required to under the subpoena and comply with her ethical obligations not to reveal privilege communications. It'll be a difficult situation and it'll be fraught with real danger. A legal complaint to the bar could follow if she makes a misstep. And just as a quick example, um, we heard earlier that Ms. Ross may be able to testify about public documents. That's not necessarily true. If that public document is about privilege and legal advice or information she relied on to give legal advice provided to her, that would be a privilege violation. She could not testify to that. So we've even heard today how fraught it will be for Ms. Ross, um, to, to answer these questions. The second is the impact on our office. We represent, as everyone knows, independent agencies, the school board, JHA, everyone in the consolidated government. And we work tremendously hard and take great pride to gain and maintain the trust of all of our clients. It's especially difficult when we're dealing with independent agencies such as JEA, the airport, the port, uh, to build that trust because we're located here. And there's a perception that we favor different clients. My understanding is there's a perception that we always favor every other client besides the one we're talking to. But we work really hard to build that trust. I'm very concerned that requiring an OGC attorney to come testify about confidential information they learned while at that client will erode that trust. The whole purpose of having that trust is so that we get the full picture in order to provide complete and most accurate and most necessary legal advice that we can. And I fear that having her testify in her oath would erode that trust. So those are the two main reasons I request not to issue a subpoena. My second request is as an alternative, if you subpoena Ms. Ross only for the last day, June 22nd, after the other witnesses have testified, it's my understanding the majority of that confidential information could come out through those other witnesses. And we don't need to put Ms. Ross through the parsing of every question. So my request is if not subpoena, only subpoena her for the 22nd. And by putting her at the end, we can potentially avoid some of those difficult questions. Um, that, that is my request. I would like to clarify one thing because it's important for my confidentiality. The process that we use with the auditors was I did not get the information from Ms. Ross and relay it. I was not a go between. Our whole purpose in helping the auditors was to make sure their legal questions were answered. I was not relaying privileged communication from Ms. Ross to the auditors. The auditors had legal questions. Ms. Ross might have had some of those legal answers. Our job was to provide them with all the legal answers we could not to be a conduit for privilege and confidential information. Happy to answer any questions and I hope I made it within three minutes, Mr. Carlin. All right. Yeah. We have Council Member Diamond. You're recognized. Well, just one statement and a question for, uh, Mr. Fackler. So first of all, in 2019, Jason Gabriel never did this. He bent over backwards and was willing to have OGC testify to anything like full transparency. But my question is through the chair. I mean, isn't it true that if JEA just waived privilege, Ms. Ross would be fine. She would have no issues with the bar. She'd have no issues with professionalism. They could just say, tell them the truth. Isn't that right? They, to, uh, Mr. Diamond, through the chair, that's correct. If they waived their privilege, then there would not be that parsing of each individual. And is it also true that eventually all of this is going to be public? No matter that the, the confidentiality that you're talking about, or even the litigation privilege with the attorney-client privilege, it all goes away with time anyways with government lawyers. Like, nothing is going to be secret down the road. Through the chair to Mr. Diamond, I respectfully disagree with the assertion that privilege remains. The work product doctrine would of course expire upon the expiration of any litigation that stemmed from it. But confidential information, unless waived, that information would remain privileged. Sure. What secrets could a board member or anybody else have over there that is not of the public interest to have full disclosure about? Like, what could you have that you don't want the public to know? Mr. Chair, uh, just as an example, there could be a litigation strategy in there. There could be concerns about, uh, the, the way we're proceeding forward. There could be concerns. I, I speak just on hypothetical. I don't. Sure. So, so put, put litigation in a bucket over here, which is probably only related to the, uh, to the capacity fee issues. You know, we're gonna have litigation maybe with mayor or something. Put that in a bucket over here. I, I could probably get my head around that. Anything else, what on earth could they have? That's a secret. If they have a conflict of interest, a board member has a conflict of interest. If they were given advice and they ignored it, isn't that all public information? Isn't it all the public interest to know it? Through the chair to Mr. Diamond, that may all be public information, but, and it can come out through the board member. But as it resides with the attorney, no, it's confidential information. It's the attorney's privilege. If you wanted to ask the board chair about his or her conflict, I would argue that that is not privilege. That is public information. But when it resides in the attorney. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I didn't mean to run that to clock. That's okay. Yep. Um, my clock is saying it is a, uh, 1145. So we actually have to conclude, but I think we've heard, um, pretty much all the information, um, that we've needed. So ultimately, uh, just to summarize real quickly, um, finance will be at one o'clock today. Uh, we will have copies of the subpoenas from Mr. Thiel. And ultimately what I heard was, um, they're going to be issued with the same dates that have already been agreed to. Um, and I'll reserve the right, um, to speak the rest of my comments and finance committee, since we're already kind of running out on time. But thank you all for coming to this, uh, you know, workshop. I thought it was, uh, appropriate. I should have done more time, but obviously the guys, uh, Jason Thiel and Mr. Fackler are out there in the audience. If you want to ask them any questions. So with that workshop is adjourned.