After a long-awaited special election on Nov. 4, three-fourths of Gainesville voters chose to return power over Gainesville Regional Utilities from the state to the city. But for now, nothing will change.
The utility service is currently under the control of a five-member authority appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. And despite the results of the special election, the authority says that it will remain in power for the foreseeable future.
A little over three months before the vote, the GRU Authority filed a lawsuit against the city. The authority claimed the city was attempting to supersede state power.
But, the election went ahead.
Now, the courts are blocking any further action until the case is settled, so the authority will remain in control of GRU until a ruling is made. The authority plans to continue to fight to maintain control through the courts.
“The GRU Authority believes yesterday's vote has no legal consequence until the board receives a court order telling it otherwise or until the special legislative act that created the Authority in 2023 is repealed,” wrote CEO Ed Bielarski in a press release sent the morning after the election titled “Keep Eyes and Mind on Task.”
The Authority believes customers should want it to remain in control too, with Bielarski pointing to lower bills for customers and lower debts for GRU.
In July 2023, when the state took over, the average electric bill for a customer who used 1,000 kwh of energy was $152, but two years later, the average bill dropped to $136, according to electric bill totals published by the Florida Municipal Electric Association.
The authority partly credits its management for the decrease, but natural gas prices may also have a hand.
“Bills go down. We’re paying down debt,” Bielarski told The Alligator on Nov. 6. “That’s a pretty effective two years.”
Of the over 76,000 eligible voters in Gainesville, under one-fifth cast ballots in the special election, according to the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections.
The election was not open to voters outside Gainesville, although 35% of the utility service’s customers live outside the city limits, according to David Warm, GRU’s communications director.
Prior to 2023, the Gainesville City Commission had control over GRU.
However, in June of that year, DeSantis signed a law to transfer operational control over GRU to a state-appointed authority board. The GRU Authority was to be composed of unpaid members “of recognized ability and good business judgement.”
The law came after years of criticism by the state and other leaders. These critics claimed GRU under city leadership was managed poorly as debt mounted.
Criticism increased after the city signed a now-failed renewable energy contract in 2009 and then paid $750 million to get out of it in 2017.
“Many citizens and elected officials have concluded that the resulting contract was poorly negotiated on the City’s side and resulted in very high fixed payments for the availability of energy, even if none were needed,” the city auditor wrote in a 2017 report.
The buyout cost, however, was less than the city would have spent to keep the initial 30-year agreement.
After the law establishing the authority passed, the city of Gainesville and nonprofit groups alike filed a slew of lawsuits in an effort to keep local control over the city’s utilities.
These efforts proved futile for the city, but challenges to the law never stopped.
In 2024, Gainesville voters were given a chance to decide whether to return control of the utility to the city. Almost 73% voted in favor of the city.
But the election results were thrown out by a circuit judge in April due to a challenge over the ballot language. The judge ruled the referendum’s wording was misleading over whether the general manager of GRU would be elected or appointed.
In 2025, the language was changed, eliminating potential legal issues with referendum terminology.
The UF chapter of the Sunrise Movement, a climate-focused political group, advocated for control over the service to be returned to the city before elections this year and last year.
“Having local control is important for representing the voice of the people of Gainesville,” said Ana Ferreira, a member of the group.
In June of this year, the city decided to place local control of utilities on the ballot again, to be voted on during a special election scheduled for Nov. 4.
On Aug. 28, the GRU Authority filed a lawsuit against the city alleging it was attempting to supersede state power by trying to override the law that established the authority.
The city, however, said the ordinance wouldn’t take effect until voters passed the referendum to remove the authority’s power over utilities, and therefore was not yet violating state law, so the courts couldn’t intervene.
On Sept. 10, the authority filed a motion to prevent the referendum from being put on the ballot. But it was too late — some vote-by-mail ballots were already sent to eligible voters by Sept. 20, before the courts could respond to the authority’s motion.
The authority then filed an emergency motion to stop the election until the lawsuit was settled.
In response, the city argued the authority was asking the “court to take the most drastic and extraordinary action in Florida law” and was attempting to “silence the voters of Gainesville.”
“That is not how this is supposed to work,” said Mayor Harvey Ward in a City Commission meeting Thursday morning.
The motion was denied on Oct. 29. The election went forward, and the referendum passed. But for now, the authority will remain in control — to the chagrin of city leaders.
Logan McBride contributed to this report.
Contact Alexa Ryan at aryan@alligator.org. Follow her on X @AlexaRyan_.
Alexa is a second-year journalism and international studies students serving as the Fall 2025 Criminal Justice beat reporter. She previously served as a copy editor. She spends her free time running, traveling, having movie nights and going on random side quests with friends.
