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JEA picks six semifinalists for CEO opening

Bobby Stein, a JEA board member and chairman of the search committee, said he believes the semifinalists are all “great candidates."

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — JEA has narrowed its search for a permanent chief executive to six semifinalists, including several executives of public utilities. 

The JEA board of directors’ search committee will interview the candidates later this month and plans to have finalists selected by Oct. 5. The board is then scheduled to interview the finalists later that month and select the utility’s new leader by Oct. 30.

While the candidates have all held executive positions in the utility industry, their resumes lack the credentials of the finalists from JEA’s 2018 CEO search who held top positions at public utilities larger than JEA. However, the board of directors instead gave the job to its then-interim CEO Aaron Zahn, a utility newcomer who has since been fired.

Bobby Stein, a JEA board member and chairman of the search committee, said he believes the semifinalists are all “great candidates" and that the board intends to hire a new leader who is one of the best in the industry.

"We'll have a better understanding after the interviews," Stein said when asked whether he believed candidates met that criteria. "We're in a very fortunate position, and we feel like we should get one of the top executives in the country to run this utility."

The semifinalists include Elaina Ball, senior vice president and interim chief operating officer of El Paso Electric; John Louis Hairston, chief operating officer of the Bonneville Power Administration in Portland, Oregon; William Herdegen III, vice president of operations at Henkels & McCoy in Aurora, Illinois; Cheryl Mele, a consultant and former chief operating officer of Austin Energy in Austin, Texas; Morgan O’Brien, former chief executive officer of People’s Gas in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania; and Jay Stowe, a utility consultant and former executive with the Tennessee Valley Authority.

JEA is being led by a new board of directors helping the utility recover from a storm of controversies that originated under Zahn’s leadership, including his use of misleading information about JEA’s financial health to convince the former board to put the city-owned utility up for sale and the creation of a bonus plan that could have paid $1 billion if JEA was sold.  

JEA's 2018 search process was a controversial one, with critics accusing Mayor Lenny Curry and his appointed JEA board members of rigging the process in favor of Zahn.

At that time, one finalist, an executive at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, dropped out of the running. The board scored Zahn the highest by a wide margin over the two remaining candidates, including an executive at CPS Energy in San Antonio, Texas, the largest municipal utility in the country.

The board earlier this year decided to part ways with its interim CEO Melissa Dykes, who was a senior executive during JEA’s privatization controversies and instead look for fresh leadership. In the meantime, it hired former CEO Paul McElroy as interim CEO to stabilize the utility, which saw its entire executive team fired in the aftermath of 2019 until they could find a permanent one.

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