Sarah Mueller
The Joint Legislative Auditing Committee has selected the lobbying firms whose compensation reports it will audit this year.
The committee randomly chose 14 Legislative branch firms and 12 Executive branch firms. The most notable firms picked include Schale Communications, Greenberg Traurig and Sunrise Consulting Group, which are all Legislative branch lobbying groups. Crisafulli Consulting is an executive branch firm.
Greenberg Traurig is one of a handful of lobbying firms that routinely breaks the $1 million mark in legislative lobbying compensation. The firm boasted total earnings of $7.7 million in 2018. The four lobbying compensation reports they posted for legislative lobbying work make up $4.5 million in earnings, while their executive branch efforts netted another $3.2 million.
Sunrise Consulting Group earned an estimated $140,000 in the third quarter of 2019. More than half of the legislative tally came from four clients that paid around $15,000 each for the quarter: the Florida Bail Agents Association, Hernando County School Board, Pasco Hernando State College Foundation and Seven Diamonds.
Sunrise Consulting indicated its Q3 legislative earnings fell between $100,000 and $250,000 while its executive report showed up to $50,000 more.
To come up with this year’s firms, the staff of the Auditor General’s Office generated two lists of random numbers that were matched to alphabetical lists of the 446 legislative branch lobbying firms and the 370 executive branch lobbying firms, in order to meet the 3% audit requirement for each branch.
Additional firms were selected in case it’s determined one of the other firms can’t be audited. Of those, Johnston & Stewart Government Strategies, LSN Partners, Pittman Law Group, and Enwright Rimes are the most prominent. The audits are set to begin on or after March 16th.
Jeff Johnston and Amanda Stewart announced the formation of Johnston & Stewart Government Strategies late last year. They have decades of experience in Florida politics.
Former Department of Economic Opportunity head Cissy Proctor is leading the LSN’s expansion, at their new Tallahassee office.
Legislative branch Firms
— Schale Communications
— Mark G. Flanagan
— Singleton Consulting, LLC
— Greenberg Traurig PA
— Schoolhouse Consulting Group Inc
— Ard Shirley & Rudolph PA
— Guilday Law, P.A.
— Joseph S. Shuler
— Yosher Strategies LLC
— The Mathis Group
— Shabbir Safdar
— Alice M. Vickers
— Sunrise Consulting Group
— Robert D. Trammell
Executive branch Firms
— Governmental Consulting
— Timmins Consulting LLC
— Fowler White Burnett
— Brewton Plante PA
— Crisafulli Consulting, LLC
— Theresa Bulger
— Glenn A. Bedonie CPA, P.A.
— Solaris Consulting
— cjt Strategies, LLC
— Fess Consulting LLC
— Diana Hadi Padgett Governmental Consultant
— Wilson & Associates LLC
Additional legislative branch firms
— Conforme Nappi, P.A.
— Panza Maurer & Maynard PA
— RFJ Governmental Consultants
— LSN Partners, LLC
— McQuone Consulting
— Pittman Law Group PL
— Johnston & Stewart Government Strategies, LLC
Additional executive branch firms
— Robert M. Levy & Associates Inc
— Capital Strategies Inc
— Richard Kravitz LSN Partners, LLC
— Pittman Law Group PL
— Enwright Rimes Consulting, Inc.
Drew Wilson contributed to this report.
