City Council members on Tuesday spent over an hour criticizing the city’s top lawyer for his office’s part in the removal of statues from the Confederate monument in Springfield Park.
The Council’s Rules Committee made no attempt to put the statues back in place, but several Council members criticized General Counsel Michael Fackler for his advice to Mayor Donna Deegan that she could remove the statues without City Council’s approval.
Deegan ordered the statutes, part of the “Tribute to the Women of the Southern Confederacy,” removed last Wednesday, two days after Christmas. The general counsel had advised her that the action was allowed because the removal was financed privately, through the Jessie Ball duPont Fund and anonymous donors to 904WARD, an organization that promotes racial equity in Jacksonville.
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Deegan said she took the steps because the statues created division in the community and City Council had shown no desire to deal with the issue.
The General Counsel’s Office advised the mayor in an unsigned draft memo that was released to the public but bypassed City Council.
“Mr. Fackler, this whole process was very disturbing to me,” Council President Ron Salem said on Tuesday. “You’ve been in this job for three weeks, confirmed by this Council earlier in December. And I just think a whole lot more care should have been given to this decision.”
Salem said he did not ever want that to happen again.
Fackler replied, “If your goal is to prevent this from happening again, we can easily work with you to make sure it’s not possible to do it without City Council approval.”
“Well, Mr. Fackler, I’m introducing legislation today,” Salem said. “Your office has that legislation. I’ll be introducing it tomorrow afternoon. I would urge you to take a look at it and help me craft legislation because, for myself, I do not want this to happen again.”
Fackler, asked whether he stood by the memo, defended the crux of the opinion, though he noted that he would tweak some wording before signing the document.
Finance Committee Chair Nick Howland also took issue with Deegan’s decision.
“I think this was executive overreach, and I think we basically just had a blatant disregard for transparency in the process,” Howland said.
Others, like Councilman Matt Carlucci, agreed with Salem that the memo should have been finalized prior to release, but he defended its reasoning, as well as Deegan’s decision to remove the monument.
“It wasn’t done in the dead of night. It was done in the morning,” Carlucci said. “It was transparent.”
Carlucci said the issue had been a “thorn in the side of this Council” that no one wanted to address.
“So somebody had to take leadership,” Carlucci said, adding that he didn’t want to hear “Mr. Fackler torn apart.”
Councilman Kevin Carrico questioned whether Deegan deliberately sidestepped City Council, but the mayor’s City Council liaison, Bill Delaney, had another explanation.
“My understanding is that it was an abundance of caution when taking this action, particularly to protect the people who were doing the work, that if there was an announcement earlier that it would cause a bit of a furor or a security concern,” Delaney said. “So we do apologize for that.”
This story first appeared in Jacksonville Today.
