Depositions in a lawsuit involving the Blueprint Intergovernmental Agency begin next month. Nineteen people, including Tallahassee Mayor John Dailey, City Manager Reese Goad, and Leon County Administrator Vince Long will be deposed. That comes as the city and county commissioners who make up Blueprint’s board are clashing over how to run the agency, which controls hundreds of millions of dollars in tax surcharge revenue.
The depositions are part of a lawsuit brought by City Commissioner Jeremy Matlow. He maintains that Blueprint’s Interlocal Management Committee – comprised of the city manager and county administrator – is subject to Florida’s Sunshine Laws. But currently the IMC, as it’s known, doesn’t keep minutes or give notice of its meetings. The IMC has the power to hire Blueprint leadership, make policy recommendations and approve expenditures of up to $500,000 without the board’s okay. But Matlow’s lawsuit is just one sign of mounting frustration on the Blueprint board.
“This board has been one of the hardest boards to chair, the hardest boards to keep decorum, the hardest boards to actually get to a place of resolution without insult,” said four-term County Commissioner Nick Maddox, the outgoing chair, at the last Blueprint meeting on November 7th.
Some of the board members have been frustrated that they don’t have more say-so over the Blueprint staff, which answers to the IMC. One of them is County Commissioner Bill Proctor.
“I’m asking y’all to get your staff under control,” he said. “I don’t like people who I’m paying a quarter of a million dollars to pick on me. I don’t like that. And I’m asking you to handle that. That’s y’all’s job.”
One solution that’s been floated is changing the structure of Blueprint so that its staff would be more accountable to the elected officials on its board of directors. But according to Blueprint Attorney Susan Dawson, if one of the city or county commissioners sitting on the board wants to change Blueprint’s governance structure, that can only be done separately by the two commissions.
“…because you cannot change the structure of the IA board here,” Dawson said. “The IA is a creation of the city and the county. The city commission can make those changes and they can agree with the county to make those changes. They’re the signatories on the interlocal agreement, and only those two bodies can make those changes.”
County Commissioner Christian Caban, who has been pushing for more board control over the Blueprint staff, disagrees.
“Madam Attorney, that’s actually not true,” he said. “There’s two ways that we can amend the IA agreement. We can vote for it here on this board, and then it goes to the county, and it goes to the city for them to vote separately. Or it can start in the city and the county and end here. I think what the motion on the table is saying is that we want to start the conversation here.”
At the county’s October 10th board meeting, the commission directed staff to invite the city to a joint city/county workshop intended to include a full legal review and analysis of Blueprint’s structure and the steps necessary to modify it. The county administrator extended the invitation, and the city declined.
The depositions for Matlow’s lawsuit will take place on December 21st and 22nd – before the next Blueprint meeting in February.
