Last June the Palm Coast City Council called on the carpet its lobbying firm in Tallahassee after voicing dissatisfaction over the city’s record haul in state appropriations. On Tuesday, the council renewed its contract with the firm, but only for one year, not three, as the administration had proposed. The city will pay the firm $72,000 for the year, up from $60,000 in the last contract year, and leave the option open for four renewals.
The one-year probationary-like contract signaled continuing unhappiness with the firm’s performance during the last legislative session even though the city netted $82 million in state appropriations. But the entire haul went for new road-building for vacant lands west of U.S. 1, with no appropriations secured for the city’s water and sewer infrastructure, on which council members had banked heavily.
The Southern Group’s Oscar Anderson and Laura Boehmer strongly defended their performance to the council in June, saying they couldn’t think of any other local government in the last 10 years that had secured as much state funding as Palm Coast in the last two. Palm Coast had counted on Paul Renner, the speaker of the house for those two years, and Travis Hutson, in the Senate’s senior leadership, to steer millions toward the city, lobbied by the Southern Group.
“I’m not in favor of going three years,” City Council member Theresa Pontieri said. “I was not happy last year with the performance in the fact that we lost out. And we can talk about until the cows come home what the governor did as far as vetoing water projects and all that. I get it, it’s not lost on me. We’re in a dire way.” Grants will not make up for it, she said. “We need to be focusing on infrastructure. I want the Southern Group to earn years number two in three.”
Council member Ed Danko credited Renner rather than the Southern Group. He may be more right than he intends: Palm Coast, Flagler County and other local governments may be looking at a comparative drought in state appropriations in coming years, with junior, back-benching members representing them in the House and Senate.
The Southern Group has been the city’s lobbyist at the state Capitol since 2017. The council hired the firm during Council member Nick Klufas’s second year of his first term. “I think they are the strongest lobbying group in Tallahassee,” he said. “I’m impartial on whether it’s one year, three years.”
The city issued a request for proposal in August and got four responses–The Southern Group, GrayRobinson (the firm representing the city in unrelated lawsuits), Pittman Law Group and Sunrise Consulting Group. Southern Group ranked a unanimous first in the city’s analysis, conducted by a procurement committee.
Other council members agreed with Pontieri. “We are still going to give them the opportunity for that full five year renewal term,” she said, though as Mayor David Alfin interpreted it, the renewals would have to take place every year.
