The City of Pensacola Public Information Officer Kaycee Lagarde is returning to Escambia County government to serve as its Strategic Communications Director.
Before taking the city PIO job under Mayor Grover Robinson, Lagarde was a senior community and media relations specialist with the county after having worked as a reporter with the News Journal for four years.
On Instagram, she wrote:
I am so incredibly grateful for my time at the City of Pensacola (and I will miss the people dearly), but I’m looking forward to the next chapter in my government communications career.
Absolutely thrilled Kaycee Lagarde is returning to the County. She’s a top-notch communications director and a great person. It’s also interesting to see the role is for strategic communications; the County has needed someone to combat the disinformation that rolls out of Jacqueline Rogers’s Escambia Citizens Watch and Andrew McKay’s morning Hit Show, not to mention the sloppy misinformation coming out of the PNJ, for a long time. Hopefully that’s something of what her role will be, as there isn’t a brighter and more ethical person to take something like that on.
Will Legarde be getting severance pay too? It has never been explained why the city has a Public Information Office but the Pensacola Police Department has a separate Public Information Officer. A future charter amendment should make the Public Information Officer an appointed “or” elected charter officer serving the entire city government vice only the executive branch. All PIO functions for the entire city would be consolidated into that single office. Until that is done, the city council should hire a Public Information Officer of its own. The Jacksonville City Council has a Chief of Public Information. Reeves’ proposed budget shows Legarde both as a division head (page 9) and in the alternative as a member of Office of the Mayor staff (page 185). If you were to believe page 185, the Public Information Office is supposedly a separate office “within” the Office of the Mayor. Same-same for the Economic Development Department listed both on page 9 and page 185 but this time claimed to be a department within an office.