Lobbying firms will know February 19 whether they’ll be audited

In two weeks Florida’s lobbying corps will know which firms will be subjected to state-mandated audits.  The Joint Legislative Auditing Committee met Monday and laid out a time line for implementing a 10-year old law mandating audits of lobbying firms quarterly compensation reports.

The firms to be audited will be selected Feb. 19 and the audits are expected to be completed by June 30.

The audits called for in a measure passed during a 2005 special session have yet to be conducted. Some firms charge annual fees that range from $50,000 to well over $100,000. It is estimated more than $200 million is spent annually to influence the direction of state policy.

It is unknown how much the firms will spend on the state-mandated audits.

“Hopefully by implementing it we will answer a lot of questions,” said committee vice-chair Rep. Dan Raulerson.  “We’re going to try to streamline as possible and as expeditiously as possible to implement the project and as we get into this we will find how the process is working and adjust it as we go along.”

The state auditor will assign lobbying firms numbers and hold a lottery two weeks from Thursday to select the 3 percent of executive branch lobbying reports and 3 percent of the legislative branch lobbying forms to be audited.

The lottery results will be posted on the committee websites and the selected firms notified by certified mail.

The firms will then have 30 days to select from one of four firms selected to conduct the audits or have an auditor assigned. More than 20 auditors are available among the selected firms which are Chicago-based Grant Thornton, Atlanta’s Warrant Averett and Tallahassee-based Carroll and Company and the Carr, Riggs & Ingram firm.

The state and auditing firms will work out a schedule for billable hours and rate of pay.

An exact amount of how much money is spent to lobby state government is unknown because the quarterly compensation reports contain a range of compensation rather than the amount billed. The reports documents compensation in increments such as up to $100,000, $100,000 – $250,000, and so on.

There are around 800 lobbying firms working the state capitol. The Florida Bar prepared this one-page summary of SB 6-B which mandated the quarterly compensation reports and annual audits.