Drew Wilson
The lobbying team at Rubin Turnbull & Associates kept pace in the third quarter with an estimated $1.55 million in earnings.
The Q3 performance had a relatively even split, with $800,000 marked down on the firm’s legislative lobbying compensation report and another $750,000 in receipts in the executive branch.
Lobbying firms are required to report their pay in ranges covering $10,000 increments for each client rather than exact amounts. Florida Politics tallies the middle number of those ranges to estimate quarterly compensation.
Firms are also required to report a broad range for their overall pay. Rubin Turnbull & Associates reported earning between $500,000 and $1 million lobbying the Legislature and the same amount lobbying the Governor and Cabinet.
The July through September incomes were on par with recent quarters at Rubin Turnbull — the firm reported about $1.6 million in earnings in Q2.
On the legislative side, founder Bill Rubin, managing partner Heather Turnbull and the half-dozen lobbyists in their employ represented 84 clients.
HCA Healthcare topped the ledger, breaking the $50,000 cap on range reporting by sending the firm $56,000 in retainers.
Florida Crystals, Motorola Solutions and The Richman Group of Florida followed at the $35,000 level and another half-dozen contracts were listed in the $20,000 to $30,000 bracket.
The $5,000 and $15,000 pay levels were filled with recognizable names and big-league corporations, such as Florida Power & Light, the University of Miami, Embraer, Southwest Airlines and The Geo Group.
Rubin Turnbull earned another $56,000 from its HCA contract in the executive, making the health care juggernaut its most lucrative contract by a mile. The executive branch report was a modest remix of the legislative one, with most clients repeating at the same pay level.
Household names on the list include Deloitte, rideshare company Lyft, Florida Institute of Technology and health insurers Humana and Aetna.
At minimum, the firm earned $1 million in Q3. If Rubin Turnbull & Associates raked in the maximum from all clients last quarter, it could have earned as much as $2 million.
Florida lobbyists and lobbying firms faced a Nov. 14 deadline to file compensation reports for the period covering July 1 through Sept. 30. Compensation reports for the fourth quarter of 2020 are due to the state in mid-February.
