Fort Meade commissioners voted 3-2 to order an internal audit of Mayor Jaret Landon Williams' travel expenses, zeroing in on costs charged to the city for his October trip to Virginia, where he toured data centers. The vote sets up a formal review of exactly what the mayor billed taxpayers for during that trip.
The audit targets expenses tied to Williams' visit to inspect data center operations in Virginia last month, according to Lakeland Ledger.
Data Centers Have Already Drawn Scrutiny in Fort Meade
The mayor's trip comes against a backdrop of heightened attention to Fort Meade's data center dealings more broadly. Commissioners unanimously approved a $2.6 billion data center development agreement with Maryland-based Stonebridge back in April 2026, a vote that drew 41 members of the public to address the commission during public comment, per reporting from The Citrus Tea.
That same outlet has also reported that minutes from the April 14, 2026 meeting where the Stonebridge deal was approved were never submitted to the commission for approval and do not appear in the city's publicly available digital records. The Citrus Tea further noted that the standard agenda item for approving meeting minutes stopped appearing on commission agendas starting with a special meeting on June 24, 2025.
Official Travel Spending Draws Scrutiny Elsewhere Too
Fort Meade is far from alone in facing questions about elected officials' travel costs. In Jacksonville, a News4JAX review found more than $219,000 in travel expenses tied to former Jacksonville Transportation Authority CEO Nat Ford's business trips between 2016 and 2025, including a 2023 trip to Spain for an international transportation conference that cost more than $9,800, with nearly $5,300 of that in airfare alone.
Three separate investigations into JTA's finances are currently underway, with Ford's travel records a focal point of that scrutiny, the station reported. Investigators with the Florida Attorney General's Office and the State Attorney's Office are examining Ford's travel history, and a JTA spokesperson said the authority has provided requested information to the Attorney General's Office and is cooperating fully with its review.
Fort Worth, Texas offers another point of comparison. The mayor and current and former City Council members there collectively recorded more than $100,000 in city-business travel spending between October 2024 and August 2026, according to Yahoo News. That city's travel policy requires officials' trips to be reasonably necessary, authorized, related to city business, and documented, and Fort Worth revised the policy in 2025 specifically to streamline trip reporting and add transparency measures.
None of those out-of-state cases establishes that similar rules or spending patterns apply in Fort Meade. For now, what's confirmed locally is narrower: commissioners have ordered a look at what Williams charged the city for his October trip, and the audit's scope, timeline, and findings have yet to be made public.
