JEA will attempt to renegotiate unusual employment agreements with the utility’s top tier of executives so they won’t be guaranteed months of consulting fees on top of 20 weeks of severance pay if they lose their jobs.
WJCT News partner The Florida Times-Union reports the JEA board voted this week to authorize the Office of General Counsel to conduct those negotiations as JEA tries to move past the tumult of the now-abandoned attempt for a potential sale of the city-owned utility.
The JEA board approved the employment agreements with the 13-member senior leadership team on July 23, the same day the board gave the go-ahead to put the utility up for sale.
State law limits severance pay to 20 weeks of compensation for government workers in Florida, but the JEA employment agreements say senior leadership team members dismissed without cause also will get consulting contracts after their last day.
The total value of those consultant contracts was $1.6 million, according to a City Council Auditor report released last month. No other independent authority in Jacksonville provides guarantees of consulting contracts to dismissed employees.
An expanded version of this story is at Jacksonville.com.
