Drew Wilson
Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney earned an estimated $2.2 million in lobbying fees last year, newly filed compensation reports show.
The team of Keith Arnold, Brett Bacot, Marnie George, Michael Harrell, Jim Magill, Kimberly McGlynn, Timothy Stanfield and Mac Stipanovich notched $1.35 million in the Legislature, with the balance coming in for their efforts in the executive branch.
Lobbying firms report their pay in ranges covering $10,000 increments. Florida Politics uses the middle number of each range to estimate overall pay.
The legislative haul came in across 60 clients. Clewiston-based U.S. Sugar led the pack with $120,000 in payments last year. The Florida League of Cities, which advocates for municipal government interests, held the No. 2 spot with an even $100,000. Marsy’s Law for All, the group behind the “victims bill of rights” amendment approved in 2018, followed at $90,000.
The client sheet listed another seven contracts valued at $60,000 apiece: Collier Health Services of Immokalee, Government Services Group, Hope HealthCare Services, Lee Memorial Health System, the Palm Beach County Tax Collector and State Farm.
A handful of well-known clients showed up below the fold, including theme park giant Universal Orlando, credit bureau Experian, and nonprofit Habitat for Humanity of Florida.
Buchanan’s executive branch reports featured the same principals but a different pecking order. At $80,000, IT consulting house CGI Technologies & Solutions was the firm’s most lucrative executive contract of 2019. Fidelity Information Services followed at $70,000.
Notably, U.S. Sugar pitched in another $50,000 to lobby the Governor and Cabinet. That makes the agricultural juggernaut Buchanan’s most profitable contract overall, netting the firm a combined $170,000 in fees over the course of 2019.
Other clients in the upper half of the executive ledger include business consulting firm Witt O’Brien’s, data visualization software company Tableau and aerospace parts manufacturer Chromalloy.
In addition to listing per-client pay ranges, lobbying firms disclose a ballpark range for their overall earnings. Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney put itself in the $250,000 to $500,000 bracket in each of its four legislative branch reports last year. The firm’s executive incomes fell between $100,000 and $250,000 each quarter.
The figures indicate Buchanan earned no less than $1.4 million last year, with a top-end estimate of $3 million.
Florida lobbyists and lobbying firms faced a Feb. 14 deadline to file compensation reports for the period covering Oct. 1 through Dec. 31. Compensation reports for the first quarter of 2020 are due to the state in mid-April.
