Vickie Cavey is the new long-term leader of JEA after a vote by the city-owned utility’s board to elevate her from her interim role.
The board voted 5-2 on Sept. 24 to elevate her as managing director and CEO.
Board Chair Joseph DiSalvo, Ricardo "Rick" Morales III, John Baker, MG Orender and Robert Stein voted in favor. Zachary Faison Jr. and Kawanza Humphrey voted no.
In a companion to the vote, DiSalvo submitted a draft of a succession plan that he plans to discuss with the board during its next meeting in October.
With the vote, JEA will not conduct a search for a long-term replacement former top executive Jay Stowe, who resigned in April 2024 after serving as managing director and CEO since 2020.
The board selected Cavey as Stowe’s interim replacement the same day as it accepted his resignation. She received a one-year contract with an annual salary of $560,000.
Under the Sept. 24 vote, Cavey will receive a contract with the same terms as the agreement she signed in April. Among other terms, she will continue to be provided with a JEA vehicle or a monthly automobile allowance of $850. She also will receive a $2,000 monthly allowance for telephone service and other business expenses.
DiSalvo said Cavey's new contract would be effective Sept. 24 once it is drafted and he signs it.
In seeking to promote Cavey, DiSalvo said he had heard from community members that the utility needed “home-grown talent” for its leadership after hiring from outside for its previous two CEOs, Stowe and Aaron Zahn.
Zahn was sentenced to four years in prison in July 2024 after being convicted in mid-March of conspiracy and wire fraud charges in U.S. District Court. Federal prosecutors alleged that Zahn and a co-conspirator, Ryan Wannemacher, deceived the JEA board into approving a scheme that would have yielded tens of millions of dollars in undeserved bonuses for the two executives and others by privatizing the utility. Wannemacher was found not guilty of the charges.
Interim angst
DiSalvo said that having Cavey as an interim was causing angst among JEA staff over the stability of the utility’s leadership. He said it was also a source of concern to bond ratings agencies and that it compromises Cavey’s leadership, as anyone opposed to her ideas or directs could “take a ‘wait her out’ mentality because she’s just a temp.”
“My perspective is you’re either in charge or you’re not,” he said.
Board member Baker said he did not believe a national search was necessary given Cavey’s performance during the past five months.
“If you run a national search and you choose someone other than Vickie, you might get a good person and you might not,” he said. “I think Vickie has shown incredible leadership. She’s gotten in and made significant changes that most interims would not have touched.”
DiSalvo praised Cavey for leading what he described as a cultural change at JEA, with Cavey holding town hall-type meetings with staff to discuss concerns. He said he had heard JEA employees ask Cavey hard questions that they were not comfortable posing under previous CEOs.
“I think the big thing is they believe in her leadership,” he said. “She’s genuine with them. She loves to go out and circulate and get out of the office, and that’s raising the morale and confidence in her at the work force level. And I think that’s permeating up through the managers and directors. Plus, she holds high standards.”
Humphrey praised Cavey’s leadership but said she believed JEA should conduct a search to allow Cavey and others to seek the position. She said a search would ensure that “we have a fair and equitable and defensible, if it ever came down to it, process.”
Decision not to search
DiSalvo, when asked whether the decision not to hold a search could create a perception that JEA didn’t seek out the best leadership available, said, “some people have that narrative.”
“But I think it’s being consistent with our charter to have a succession plan,” he said. “And why would we have a succession plan and then say, OK, at the same time, let’s conduct a search. It’s almost counterintuitive.”
DiSalvo said he anticipated that Cavey would serve beyond her contract when it expires in the spring. At that point, he said, the board may consider whether to extend a mutiyear contract offer to her.
Meanwhile, he said, his proposed succession plan would involve finding future leaders from within JEA’s ranks and preparing them to ascend the executive ladder.
“It’s Vickie taking a look at who the next senior leadership team should be, how we can develop folks who can move from directors to managers,” he said. “It’s identifying who’s ready to step up and, most importantly, identify what’s the training program, the glide path to get them to start training into senior leadership teams or potentially the CEO.”
Long career at JEA
Cavey, a longtime JEA engineer and administrator, came out of retirement in March 2024 when the board asked her to serve as a liaison between them and Stowe’s administration to review the utility’s organizational structure and help choose an independent consultant that the board would pay to examine JEA’s capital improvement plan.
DiSalvo said he supported Cavey for the role because her experience with JEA and her workings with the board made her a good candidate to lead the utility through the transition to its next leader.
During her decades-long career with JEA, Cavey held such positions as special assistant to the CEO for external affairs, director of strategy development and execution and director of strategic partnerships and acquisitions.
Stowe questioned
Her return to JEA in the consultancy role came after Stowe began facing questions over spending, including a plan by his administration to pump $4 billion into capital improvements over the next several years.
That plan, which the board is reviewing with assistance from Sarasota-based consultant K3 Strategies LLC of Sarasota, includes a $2.3 billion upgrade and expansion of the water and sewer system and a new high-tech natural gas electric-generation plant that will cost about $1 billion.
Stowe also was scrutinized over a JEA holiday party at the Florida Theatre, for which the utility spent $72,000 at a time when it was raising utility rates.
After the board accepted Stowe’s resignation, DiSalvo said his departure had nothing to do with malfeasance or misconduct but was due to a philosophical difference between Stowe and the board over the direction of JEA. DiSalvo likened it to a sports team changing coaches.
Stowe’s resignation was effective Aug. 15. Under a separation agreement, he was to be paid a lump sum of $257,504 and a monthly business allowance of $2,083.
Among the changes that have occurred under Cavey’s watch, JEA curtailed a work-from-home policy adopted under Stowe by requiring supervisors to spend at least one day a week in the Jacksonville office. The change to the “Work Where We Work Best” policy resulted in the resignations of two high-level JEA leaders who had been living and working out of state.
The policy change came after news outlets reported that four highly paid JEA executives were living out of state, which also led to questions about Stowe’s leadership.
This story has been updated with additional board comment and to clarify the board vote.