Palm Coast’s haul in state appropriations during Rep. Paul Renner’s tenure as Speaker of the House in the last two years wasn’t just a record for Palm Coast. It was an extraordinary haul for any community in the state in recent memory: $55 million last year, $82 million this year, for a combined $137 million.
“I don’t know that there’s another local government in the state of Florida that we can think of in the past 10 years, at least since I’ve been doing what I’m doing, 15 years, that has ever received as much funding as the city of Palm Coast has received the past two years,” Laura Boehmer told the Palm Coast City Council this morning.
Boehmer was sitting alongside Oscar Anderson. They are part of the Southern Group, the powerful Tallahassee lobbying firm Palm Coast hired in 2017 and that, startlingly, took overt criticism from Council members Theresa Pontieri, Ed Danko and complicit criticism from Mayor David Alfin–who did not defend the firm–for somehow failing the city. Alfin was supportive of Pontieri’s move to possibly not renew the firm’s contract later this year, which would have been equal to a firing, until Pontieri agreed to giving the firm’s representatives a chance to explain themselves.
“It was a little disheartening to hear that you guys thought we failed because this is like record stuff,” Anderson said. “Like, I’m going to talk about what we’ve done for Palm Coast is like a huge point of pride around the state, because it really was record funding from from that perspective.”
That’s what today’s presentation by Boehmer and Anderson amounted to: a response to an inquisition, albeit an inquisition that, by the time the pair of lobbyists had sat down in person in front of the council, had already been sharply dialed down to a sort of Marriage Encounter session. The council critics’ aim was no longer to criticize or threaten dissolution but to learn, recalibrate and grow.
“I appreciate the work, first of all, that you all have done and I don’t want to minimize what has been done, what has been accomplished,” Pontieri was first to say, before the discussion started, acknowledging the weirdness of it all. “It’s a little bit of an awkward situation. I’ll be quite honest with you, but I appreciate your candor and your accountability and being here today.”
After hearing Anderson’s crestfallen words, she said: “I want to be very clear, because I was attacked in the media for this. I’m not ungrateful for what we have gotten. It is more, I don’t want our residents to feel like they’re being left behind for the future of Palm Coast. And that is how they feel. I don’t blame them. So it’s not just communication from Tallahassee to us. It’s so that we can also communicate with and educate our residents and let them know hey, you know, before we get the list or you know, let them know that we are trying for you.”
Just to be entirely clear, by session’s end, she had no intention to pursue a divorce, just a different way of doing business: “I welcome us to continue to work together in the future. But I would like to see an ardent change to the process,” Pontieri said.
Danko by then had no questions (he would later compliment the firm), nor had Council member Cathy Heighter. Nick Klufas, the only remaining council member who was one of the original votes to hire the Southern Group in 2017 (when it was Southern Strategy Group), gave the firm some cover from criticism. “There’s a little bit of fog of war that exists between Tallahassee and the city of Palm Coast. And at the end of the day, it’s sort of a black box that we get told what we get appropriated,” Klufas said.
Pontieri had specific questions about the city’s water-infrastructure projects, with one $35 million request resulting in a $1 million appropriation, and even that was vetoed. She referred to other water and road projects that didn’t get funded, and $6 million for a proposed YMCA in Town Center that got vetoed. On the other hand, the loop road through the unbuilt western portion of the city, from Matanzas Woods Parkway to Palm Coast Parkway, got $80 million.
It was a record haul for the city, though clearly a disproportionate one that didn’t favored the city or its existing residents so much as it did its imagined future west of U.S. 1. Still, Pontieri had been concerned about what looked like the wrong priorities getting through, and what she had perceived as Southern Group drawing up priorities without the council’s involvement.
Boehmer said there is no such thing as prioritizing the city’s projects. Lobbyists meet with the governor’s Office of Policy and Budget, city staff answers questions when they’re raised, then the governor’s office makes its decisions. “This year there were over $200 million worth of water project vetoes,” Boehmer said. “Every single local government I represent had a water project or multiple water projects vetoed. I don’t think that that means that water quality is not important to the legislature or the governor this year. There is historic funding that was put into both the resilient Florida grant program and the Water Quality Improvement Grant Program. The legislature funded it at roughly around $200 million,” plus an additional $200 million through the Seminole gaming compact bill passed a few years ago.
It was precisely because of that large pair of appropriations that many line-item projects got vetoed, Boehmer said. Silver lining threaded through that reasoning: after the vetoes, the state Department of Environmental Protection extended its deadline for water-project grants–even the same grants that were vetoed–until July 15. There is no such opportunity for roads. Southern Group is prepared to lobby for those grants, assuming the city applies.
In Alfin’s interpretation, it comes down to timeliness of communications. Boehmer cautioned: “I can report all the rumors I hear, you would get tired of hearing from me,” he said. “How we, how we pass that message on is so little up to you. How involved you want to be in this process, it’s up to you. Every one of our local governments is different on how we interact with them.”
Alfin alluded to the Renner-Hutson gravy train reaching terminus. “What we enjoyed yesterday is not what it’s going to be like tomorrow,” he said, suggesting that this was the time to recalibrate the relationship with the lobbying firm in light of that “very different landscape.” Pontieri spoke of more needed interactions between the lobbyists and council members, especially when city representatives go to the state capital. She was apparently not always aware that a staff member or a council member was in Tallahassee representing the city during the session.
Boehmer turned marketer on occasion (“sometimes our competitors may knock us because we are the largest firm in the state”), though in fairness Klufas had lobbed her a softball (“why is it important that we have solid representation?”) especially designed for the fences. Boehmer hit it over fences that might as well have been painted in Southern Group’s trademark burgundy and white colors. By the end of the lobbyists’ presentation, their $6,000-a-month contract with the city looked veto-free.
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