The facts
The Florida Attorney General's Office of Statewide Prosecution subpoenaed the Jacksonville Transportation Authority on Sept. 28, demanding records on outside vendor contracts, transit ridership reports, tuition reimbursements, and a wellness program that included massages. The subpoena landed in the middle of a financial crisis that has brought deep layoffs and cuts in transit service.
The contracts under scrutiny include Dream Builders Communication, an executive coaching firm; Jones-Worley Designs, which handled branding; Jacobs Project Management Company, for engineering and construction; and Mason Nye Murals, which painted murals at JTA's operations center under a $141,040 contract. Investigators also want JTA's ridership reports to the American Public Transportation Association, the names of every employee who got tuition assistance, and communications between former CEO Nat Ford, his wife, and Kenston Griffin of Dream Builders Communications.
The subpoena also seeks a recording of a February 2025 board meeting where board member Megan Hayward questioned JTA's ridership figures, which she said varied by thousands of riders from data given to outside trackers. Mayor Donna Deegan declined to reappoint Hayward to the board in 2025. Council member Rory Diamond said in an X post that Deegan "fired the only board member who was asking questions"
State Rep. Wyman Duggan, a possible 2027 mayoral challenger to Mayor Deegan, wrote in an X post that 150 employees were fired, alongside claims of tens of millions of dollars missing and a silenced whistleblower. The mayor's office responded that JTA is a state agency whose staff are state employees, and accused Duggan of "intentionally misleading the public."
Interim CEO Cleveland Ferguson received tuition assistance for doctoral coursework at Nova Southeastern University in conflict analysis and resolution, approved by Ford when he was CEO. No payments have been made toward his tuition since August 2025. In August 2024, Ford told the City Council Finance Committee the wellness program involved 15-minute "chair massage" breaks aimed at recruiting bus drivers. The subpoena seeks the number and cost of those massages.
Our take
You absolute fucking parasites. While your agency was firing 150 people and cutting bus routes into oblivion, you were writing checks for $141,040 to paint some goddamn murals on the wall. Not to fix the buses. Not to pay the drivers you were shitting out onto the street. For murals. You pretentious, self-important cunts. You bankrupted public transit so you could have a nicer fucking lobby to walk through on your way to your executive coaching session.
Let’s inventory this clown car of grift. You hired ‘Dream Builders Communication’ to coach your already overpaid executives. You paid a branding firm to make your collapse look stylish. You gave the interim CEO, Cleveland Ferguson, tuition assistance for a doctorate in ‘conflict analysis and resolution’ while he presided over a financial catastrophe that’s now a state investigation. The irony is so thick you could paint a mural with it. This prick was learning how to resolve conflicts while creating the biggest one in Jacksonville.
And then there are the massages. In the middle of this fucking disaster, former CEO Nat Ford stood up and told the city council the ‘wellness program’ with 15-minute chair rubdowns was to help recruit bus drivers. Bullshit. It was to help executives forget they were driving the whole operation into a ditch. The subpoena now demands the number and cost of every massage. I hope the final line item is ‘$500,000 in handjobs for leadership while the bus system died.’
Then you silenced the one person asking questions. Board member Megan Hayward pointed out the ridership numbers were bullshit, so Mayor Donna Deegan fucking canned her. Council member Rory Diamond called it out on X: she ‘fired the only board member who was asking questions.’ Of course she did. The truth is bad for the branding. Can’t have a whistleblower fucking up the vibe of your $141,040 mural.
Now the state attorney general is digging through the receipts. This isn’t an audit; it’s a forensic examination of a vanity project masquerading as a public agency. Every dollar for a mural, a massage, or a bullshit coaching session was a dollar stolen from a bus route and a worker’s job. You are not public servants. You are a cabal of grifting dickheads who treated a transit authority like your personal art-and-wellness slush fund. I hope the subpoena finds exactly what it’s looking for: a mountain of evidence that you’re all fucking crooks.
