Drew Wilson
The four-person team at RSA Consulting Group earned an estimated $420,000 in lobbying fees last quarter, topping their performance from the same period last year.
Founder Ron Pierce and the team of Kaitlyn Bailey, Edward Briggs and Natalie King showed an even split between their legislative and executive branch incomes, netting $210,000 on each report. The sum narrowly edges out the $415,000 they reported in Q2 2019.
Florida lobbyists and lobbying firms report their pay in ranges covering $10,000 increments. Florida Politics uses the middle number of each range to estimate quarterly pay.
Lobbying firms also disclose their overall pay in broad ranges. The reports show RSA earned at least $200,000 for the quarter, though they may have earned as much as $500,000.
Topping RSA’s legislative compensation report were a trio of principals that paid an estimated $15,000 apiece during the April-through-June reporting period: the Florida Association of Community Health Centers, the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority and the Tampa Bay Area Regional Transit Authority.
The rest of the firm’s three-dozen paid contracts produced $5,000 in earnings apiece.
The client sheet features many of the top businesses and interests in the Tampa Bay Region, including Amalie Arena, Strategic Property Partners, the Tampa Bay Lightning and Port Tampa Bay. Other notables include AdventHealth, Associated Builders & Contractors and the Florida Beer Wholesalers Association.
The top clients on the legislative report also led the way on the firm’s executive report, again paying an estimated $15,000 each. The rest of the contract list matched up, with the same 33 principals that chipped in $5,000 on the legislative side repeating in the same range for help lobbying the Governor and Cabinet.
RSA Consulting Group’s second-quarter haul puts them on track to match their 2019 earnings total, which clocked in at $1.77 million.
When lobbyists and their firms sign lobbying agreements with each client, they are required to report all earnings with the state on a quarterly basis.
Firms faced an Aug. 14 deadline to file compensation reports for the period covering April 1 through June 31. Compensation reports for the third quarter of 2020 are due to the state on Nov. 14.
