Charlie Frago Credit: Photo c/o of Charlie Frago

Ten years after his arrival at the Tampa Bay Times, city hall reporter Charlie Frago has left the building.

Frago confirmed the news to Creative Loafing Tampa Bay today.

“Philosophical differences arose between myself and the Times. I did not see a path forward,” Frago told CL, adding that he resigned effectively this morning. “I think I sent the email about 10:30 a.m.”

In a statement to CL, the Times said it “does not comment on personnel matters.”

Frago arrived at the Times on April 13, 2013 after a decade at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Before that, he reported out of North Carolina for the Greensboro News & Record and the City News Bureau of Chicago. At the Times, he initially covered Clearwater City Hall before moving to the St. Pete City Hall Beat in 2014 and then Tampa’s City Hall in 2018.

“I enjoyed working for the Times and serving Tampa, St. Pete and Clearwater,” Frago said. “It’s been my life’s work.”

He’s been a dutiful servant to the beat, and last year he broke a story about how it was actually lobbyists from the City of Tampa who helped craft Florida’s SB64, which is now forcing the city to find something to do with approximately 50 million gallons a day of highly treated reclaimed water it now dumps into Tampa Bay.

Mayor Jane Castor’s recent solution to the bill is to implement her “PURE” wastewater plan, which has been rejected by much of the community, city council and most of the candidates still on the ballot in this month’s runoff.

Last April during a press conference, Frago sparred with the mayor and City of Tampa Communications Director Adam Smith—who used to work with Frago at the Times—over transparency issues and the friction between city council and the mayor’s office.

That leaves Tampa City Hall without a dedicated reporter, with three weeks until the hotly-contested city council runoff, which will decide who will and won’t work with Mayor Castor as she gets going on her second term.

The news also comes months after the loss of a breaking news reporter, Anastasia Dawson, whose last byline at the Times was in November 2022. In February of this year—almost three years of relative calm— the Times completed a new round of newsroom layoffs which affected two full-time and two part-time staffers.

As for what’s next for Frago, he’s not yet sure.