Office of General Counsel in Jacksonville, Florida

The Office of General Counsel is the law firm that represents the consolidated City of Jacksonville and Duval County. The City of Jacksonville website puts the staff at forty-six attorneys, which makes it one of the largest law firms in Jacksonville. It does not sit inside any one department. It works for the Mayor's Office, the City Council, the independent authorities and the countywide elected officers at the same time, and it answers legal questions for all of them with one voice.

The office works from 117 W. Duval Street, Suite 480, on the Northbank in downtown Jacksonville, according to its contact page, telephone 904-255-5100. The city is direct about one limit that surprises callers: the Office of General Counsel cannot provide legal advice to members of the public. A Duval County resident with a landlord dispute or a private contract question has to look elsewhere. The office's clients are the parts of the government itself.

The practice list reads like a midsize private firm: business and real estate financing, employment law and employee benefits, land use, environmental law, legislative affairs, zoning, foreclosures, eminent domain, construction contracts, tort litigation, municipal financing, bankruptcy and evictions. The difference is the client. A Jacksonville zoning appeal, a JEA bond deal and a lawsuit over a sidewalk fall can all land on desks in the same downtown suite.

Consolidation folded the old City of Jacksonville and the Duval County government into a single structure, and the charter that made that merger put the lawyers in one place too. The office says it plays a critical role in making consolidated government work, and the main OGC page states that under the City Charter it provides legal services to all entities of the consolidated government. In practice that means the Jacksonville City Council and the mayor do not hire separate outside firms to argue with each other over what the charter means. One office decides.

That decision carries weight. In a January 2025 statement reported by Action News Jax, the Jacksonville Bar Association pointed to Section 7.02 of the charter: the General Counsel has binding authority over the consolidated government and is obligated to provide binding opinions when requested. A binding opinion from the Duval Street office settles a dispute between branches unless a court says otherwise. Mayor Donna Deegan put it more plainly in a statement quoted by the Jacksonville Daily Record: she said that under the charter the Office of General Counsel is the glue that holds the Consolidated Government together.

The clients page makes the comparison with the rest of the state directly. In no other county in Florida does the local government attorney represent all county constitutional officers, independent agencies, the executive branch, legislative branch and all government boards and commissions. Duval County folds those jobs into one office on Duval Street, a direct product of consolidation.

The client list on the City of Jacksonville website is long. On the executive side it names the Mayor's Office and departments including Finance and Administration, Public Works, the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department, the Office of Economic Development, Parks, Recreation and Community Services, Sports and Entertainment, Planning and Development, and Military Affairs and Veterans. On the legislative side it names the Jacksonville City Council, which the page describes as comprised of 19 members, with 14 elected from specific districts and 5 elected at-large. The office advises the council on legislation and on procedural, constitutional and parliamentary questions.

The independent agencies are the big-budget clients. The clients page lists the Duval County School Board, the Jacksonville Aviation Authority, the Jacksonville Housing Authority, JEA, the Jacksonville Transportation Authority and the Jacksonville Port Authority, known around town as JAXPORT. It also gives a sense of scale: the Duval County School Board has over 125,000 students, over 14,000 employees and a budget of $1.3 billion, and JEA, the city-owned electric and water utility, has over 2,000 employees and a budget of $1.6 billion per year. The two OGC pages describe JEA's size differently, the clients page as a $5.1 billion utility and the main page as $8.6 billion, so the dollar figure depends on which page is read.

Duval County's five constitutional officers are clients as well: the Clerk of Courts, the Property Appraiser, the Tax Collector, the Supervisor of Elections and the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. Then come the boards. The page lists the Human Rights Commission, the Historic Preservation Commission, the Waterways Commission, the Environmental Protection Board, the Kids Hope Alliance, the Value Adjustment Board, the Municipal Code Enforcement Board and the Planning Commission, and notes that this is a partial list of the more than 30 boards and commissions the office represents in Jacksonville.

The Municipal Law Clinic page names five departments in the Office of General Counsel: the Legislative Affairs Department, Regulatory and Constitutional Law, Government Operations, General Litigation, and Tort and Employment. Each is led by a deputy general counsel. The current attorney roster on the City of Jacksonville website lists Deputy General Counsels Christopher M. Garrett in General Litigation, Sean B. Granat in Labor and Employment, Sonya Harrell in Tort, John C. Sawyer, Jr. in Governmental Operations and Mary E. Staffopoulos in Legislative Affairs and Regulatory, with department labels that have shifted slightly from the clinic page's older list.

Some assignments follow the agencies rather than the subject matter. The roster lists several attorneys as Independent Agency Counsel, the lawyers placed with bodies such as JEA and the Jacksonville Housing Authority, and one Assistant General Counsel as Downtown Investment Authority Counsel, the lawyer for the downtown Jacksonville redevelopment agency. That arrangement lets an authority keep a lawyer who knows its business while the binding answer on any charter question still comes from the General Counsel.

Last verified: October 9, 2026, on the City of Jacksonville website. On that date the office's home page and roster listed Michael T. Fackler as General Counsel.

The General Counsel is appointed by the mayor, screened by a review committee and confirmed by the Jacksonville City Council. The most recent pass through that process came in 2023. Mayor Donna Deegan's first choice, former council member Randy DeFoor, withdrew after it became clear there would be a lengthy confirmation battle, according to Jacksonville Today. Deegan then selected Michael Fackler, a commercial litigator, in September 2023, and Action News Jax reported that council members on both sides of the DeFoor fight signaled support for him.

Jacksonville Today reported that Fackler had been acting general counsel since Sept. 29, 2023, when he took over the interim position from former acting general counsel Bob Rhodes. On Oct. 26, 2023 the General Counsel Qualification Review Committee, chaired by former General Counsel Jason Gabriel, approved him. The same report noted his law degree from the University of Florida College of Law in 2002 and a clerkship with U.S. District Judge Harvey Schlesinger in the Middle District of Florida. The Jacksonville Daily Record reported that the City Council confirmed Fackler in a unanimous vote on Dec. 12, 2023.

The power to issue binding opinions is the part of the office that draws the most heat at City Hall. The clearest recent case came in January 2025. Council had passed an ordinance in September 2024 giving trash hauler Meridian Waste a 29% increase for curbside service in parts of Duval County, Mayor Deegan vetoed it, and council overrode the veto 14-4. Deegan asked for an opinion. According to the Jacksonville Daily Record, Fackler concluded that council had likely complied with the ordinance code, but he said the provision of the code that gives Council that authority violates separation of powers language in the city charter, making the ordinance invalid.

Council members Ron Salem and Rory Diamond answered with Resolution 2025-0081, which stated that the Council lacks faith in General Counsel Michael Fackler to continue to lead the office. The resolution also cited his opinion backing the mayor's December 2023 order to remove a Confederate monument from Springfield Park. The Jacksonville Bar Association defended him the next day, as reported by Jacksonville Today, saying his advice had simply not matched the council's agenda. A March 24, 2025 council preview from Jacksonville Today reported that the resolution, co-sponsored by eight members, was amended during the committee process to say that some Council members had confidence issues. A council resolution of that kind records the members' view of the office; it does not by itself remove a General Counsel or set aside a binding opinion.

The office also runs a training program. In 1998, the Municipal Law Clinic was created by the Office of General Counsel, according to the City of Jacksonville website. Second and third year law students work in the downtown Jacksonville office for credit toward their law degrees, rotating among the deputy general counsels and attending City Council meetings, depositions, mediations, state and federal court hearings and board meetings. Students are required to commit at least 30 hours per week, and they keep billing records even though the work costs the client nothing.

The payoff for Duval County taxpayers is stated on the same page: in past years, students in the Municipal Law Clinic Program billed approximately $400,000 in legal services at no cost to the clients or taxpayers. For a government whose lawyers already cover JEA, the school district and the Jacksonville City Council, the clinic adds research and drafting help without adding salaried positions.