Florida Ethics Commission will review complaint against Newberry Mayor Jordan Marlowe

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

NEWBERRY, Fla. – The Florida Commission on Ethics has confirmed that it will review a complaint against Newberry Mayor Jordan Marlowe, submitted by Save Our Schools Newberry Co-Chair Tyler Foerst.

The complaint alleges that Marlowe “has been directing City staff to assist in the creation of the budget for EFN (Education First for Newberry) and has used City resources in benefit of EFN, a private entity, without a vote of the City Commission. By unilaterally ordering City staff to work for the benefit of a private entity, the Mayor has clearly overstepped his authority and abused his power.” According to the complaint, the first action taken by the City Commission regarding the charter schools was on February 26.

The complaint includes a series of emails that were obtained via public records requests.

December 11, 2023

A December 11 email from Newberry City Manager Mike New to other City employees, the Mayor, and the City Commission provides information about the percentages of students attending Newberry schools that live inside and outside the city limits.

The request that led to this email was not included in the complaint; Marlowe told Alachua Chronicle this is a request he makes every year and that he requested the update earlier in the fall.

December 19, 2023

A December 18 email from Andy Binns to Marlowe describes assumptions made in EFN’s proposed budget; on December 19, Marlowe forwarded Binns’ email to Assistant City Manager Dallas Lee with the comment, “Sorry! Here is the latest!”

December 20, 2023

The text of a December 20 email from Marlowe to Dallas Lee is not shown in the complaint, but the response from Lee says, “We will need to add another HR person to our staff as well since we’re 3xing the number of current employees.”

January 24, 2024

A January 24 email from Dallas Lee to another City employee, Amanda Hagan, does not include Marlowe on the distribution and does not mention Marlowe but says, “I have a meeting coming up about that secret thing we talked about a few weeks ago, with a Charter school attorney and accounting expert. Please send me any questions you would like me to ask during this meeting.”

February 8, 2024

A February 8 email from Dallas Lee to Marlowe and Mike New asks questions about the proposed charter school budget. The questions indicate that Lee is evaluating the assumptions in the budget.

February 21, 2024

A February 21 email from Mike New to Sheriff Emery Gainey and three Sheriff’s Office employees requests “law enforcement representatives” for a charter school Q&A meeting on February 23. An email in the same thread indicates that two deputies will be requested for each of the three Q&A meetings. New writes that the City of Newberry will pay for the deputies. Marlowe is not mentioned in the emails and is not on the distribution list.

February 22, 2024

A February 22 email shows that Marlowe forwarded data (“the information you requested”) provided by City staff to EFN organizers. The information provided is not shown or described in the complaint, but the subject of the email (“RE: Newberry School Demographics update”) is the same as the December 11 email.

The ethics complaint states that the unspecified data in the February 22 email was used in EFN’s first presentation.

February 22, 2024

On the evening of February 22, Dallas Lee sent an email to Marlowe with more questions about the assumptions in the charter school budgets. Marlowe responds with some answers and adds, “For now, I want to build a budget that offers everything, and then, we can see where we are and if we need to cut.”

Later in the evening, Marlowe sent an email to Lee, asking him to send the latest budget to Searby: “We want to provide the most up to date information tomorrow,” presumably referring to the February 23 Q&A meeting.

February 23, 2024

A February 23 email thread shows Searby exchanging budget information with Dallas Lee and an email from Lee to Searby and Marlowe that includes a link to the budget. The ethics complaint frames this as “sharing an internal City file with Searby.”

The full ethics complaint can be viewed here.

Save Our Schools Newberry statement

In a media release, Save Our Schools Newberry said, “Marlowe used staff time and resources for the secret and early planning of the takeover by having City employees help with budgeting for the petitioning Education First for Newberry group without board approval.”

Save Our Schools Newberry, which continues to insist that the Newberry Elementary School vote failed although the Florida Department of Education affirmed that the threshold is “at least half of teachers,” also claims that Marlowe’s actions since the charter conversion vote “are being used to intentionally confuse thousands of parents… We are once again calling on the Mayor to stop being an election denier and stop using fear-mongering tactics to cause parents to stress more and to disrupt the important education of their children simply because his side lost. We encourage our local media outlets to stop entertaining this false narrative and to call them out.”

Marlowe’s response

Marlowe told Alachua Chronicle that it is routine for the Mayor and Commissioners to ask staff for information. He added, “I received an acknowledgment from the Florida Commission on Ethics that a complaint was received; the letter stated that no decision had been made about whether enough evidence was received to warrant opening an investigation.”

Marlowe added that a separate Sunshine Law complaint against him has already been dismissed. That complaint was about a group text that included several Newberry City Commissioners; screenshots from the group text indicate that Marlowe quickly advised the Commissioners to leave the group.

Ethics complaint review process

The first stage of any review by the Commission on Ethics is a determination of whether the allegations of the complaint are legally sufficient, meaning that they indicate a possible violation of any law over which the Commission has jurisdiction. At the Commission’s April 17 meeting, for example, 28 complaints were dismissed for lack of legal sufficiency.

The Commission’s next meeting is on June 7; the agenda has not yet been published.

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