The Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) Authority filed an emergency injunction on Monday to expedite the review of its lawsuit against the city of Gainesville and the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections.
The lawsuit claims that the city of Gainesville has no ability to place a question on the ballot for voters that contradicts state law. The question, or referendum, asks Gainesville voters whether they want to remove Section 7 from the city’s Charter. That section was written and inserted into the Charter in 2023 by the Florida Legislature, and its removal would dissolve the GRU Authority in an attempt to revert control of the utility back to the City Commission.
On Sept. 10, the GRU Authority filed the lawsuit after months of anticipation—officially asking the courts to stop the referendum. The authority has also sent questions to Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and asked for her input.
According to the GRU Authority, the new emergency injunction asks the Eighth Judicial Circuit of Florida to prevent the referendum from reaching the November ballot or, if the ballot includes the referendum, prevent enforcement of the results until the lawsuit has been settled in court. The injunction also asks for an expedited review of the lawsuit.
The lawsuit claims the city of Gainesville has no authority to issue a referendum that is contrary to the intent of state law placed by the Legislature along with other arguments.
The referendum, lawsuit and emergency injunction represent the latest moves in the back-and-forth struggle for management control of Gainesville’s utilities—lasting over 18 months at this point.
Gainesville Commissioner Bryan Eastman said that the authority and its lawyers moved too slowly with the ballot already sent to print.
On Tuesday, Aaron Klein confirmed that the Supervisor of Elections has finalized the ballot and plans to send vote-by-mail ballots later this week. He said the final ballot versions were sent to its vendor on Sept. 6 for printing.
Alachua County uses multiple ballot versions to account for city limits and political boundaries.
Klein said Tropical Storm Helene might delay arrivals, but the 30,000 Alachua County residents signed up should get the ballots by early next week. The Supervisor of Election Office would then send out more vote-by-mail ballots as residents signed up for the service.
He said if a judicial intervention occurred, the office could potentially change the ballot if needed.
The emergency motion asks that if the ballot is already confirmed, the court could request that the results not be enforced by the city of Gainesville until the lawsuit is settled.
Editor’s note: This story was updated with information from Bryan Eastman and Aaron Klein.
The City knows no matter how this ballot question turns out, they still can’t override or pass something that conflicts with state law. But so what, they seem to have very deep pockets and money is no object in their quest to take back GRU, so they can continue to milk their cash cow dry.
If I understand things correctly, the State Law changed the City’s charter with regard to GRU management. there is nothing in the law that said the City can’t change the City’s charter themselves.
I’ve asked this question a hundred times; and never got an answer. Just what did that change in GRU management hope to achieve? By what mechanisms are the goals of reducing debt, reducing rate cost and maintaining service going to all be achieved? And, ya know what’s ironic in all this? Ed B. got himself renamed to run the Utility and got a big raise, to boot.
The reality is that a businessman screwed the people of Gainesville by selling them on the biomass plant so he could get rich quick on the backs of Gainesville’s families and no matter who runs GRU the bills won’t go down because it was bought and has to be paid for – like it or not.
The difference is that now that the GRU authority is in charge they’ve managed to get rich quick too by fleecing the families in Gainesville yet again by giving themselves jobs at GRU with the biggest fattest salaries we’ve ever seen there. Now how does that save us any money?
It’s all about small local government rule until what the locals vote to do doesn’t match what the republicans in Tallahassee want – then it is big government right down your throat.
I would edit this story as follows:
“The Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) Authority FINALLY filed an emergency injunction on Monday to expedite the review of its lawsuit against the city of Gainesville and the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections. Inexplicably the authority and its lawyers have moved too slowly, with the ballot already sent to print.”
SMH, wondering why they waited so long…
“The lawsuit claims that the city of Gainesville has no ability to place a question on the ballot for voters that contradicts state law. The question, or referendum, asks Gainesville voters whether they want to remove Section 7 from the city’s Charter…”
The referendum asks the voters what they want the City to do. Why does GRU not want that question asked? Eh? We know the answer.