JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A Jacksonville Transportation Authority board member is demanding that the agency’s top three remaining executives resign, saying former CEO Nat Ford and his leadership team deliberately concealed the depth of JTA’s financial problems for more than a year.
In a public statement released Monday, Board Director J. Daniel Vallencourt said JTA’s interim CEO, COO and senior vice president of public affairs should all step down — and that the authority cannot recover with any of them still in place.
“The Jacksonville Transportation Authority cannot navigate this financial crisis without major change,” Vallencourt wrote. “The house was on fire, and leadership was doing everything it could to convince everyone otherwise.”
Board kept in the dark on reserve withdrawals
Vallencourt joined the JTA board in February 2026. At his first meeting, he said management asked the board to approve an emergency budget cut — reducing the operating budget from $162.4 million to $148.2 million — blaming a drop in sales tax revenue. What the board was not told, according to Vallencourt, was that JTA had already been drawing from its reserve funds for a full year by that point…