County School Board looks to hire lobbyist

The Sarasota County School Board plans to hire a full-time lobbyist to represent the district in Tallahassee.

The board agreed to the move at a Tuesday work session, citing the need to better gauge how state legislative decisions could potentially affect Sarasota County, as well as the need to have an advocate for Sarasota County schools permanently entrenched in Tallahassee.

The district's recent push for state funding for a Sarasota County Technical Institute facility in North Port spurred some School Board members to support the measure.

“From what I saw in Tallahassee, I think one is needed to get our message across,” board member Shirley Brown said. “We need someone to be our conduit.”

The district spent $40,000 for The Mayernick Group to lobby for additional state funding for building a North Port SCTI campus.

The district had previously hired Mixon and Associates for about $20,000 annually, but Brown said the lobbying firm did not achieve the results necessary to justify the expenditure due to rocky relationships with lawmakers. The School Board subsequently cut funds for a dedicated lobbyist while budget crunching during the recession.

“It was a waste of money,” Brown said.

With a list of new issues on Tallahassee's horizon, however, and following the lessons learned from the push to secure funding for the North Port SCTI extension, board members generally agreed that choosing a proven lobbyist with good relationships with state legislators would be an asset to the district.

One of the School Board’s primary concerns was how the volume and complexity of bills the Legislature is generating make it difficult for district staff as well as board members to stay apprised of which issues they need to fight for or against.

Brown said state Sunshine Law impedes elected school board members’ discussions with state representatives on how proposed legislation might affect the district. A lobbyist employed by the district, however, would not be subject to those same rules.

“Our representatives said they would respect us more if we had a lobbyist,” Brown said.

Board member Frank Kovach was the one holdout Tuesday, questioning the utility of paying for a lobbyist based on the limited results from Mixon and Associates.

“I still don't see where having a lobbyist gets you anything,” Kovach said. “Maybe there are some systematic problems if you need a lobbyist to tell our representatives about our issues.”

Kovach also pointed out that paying for a lobbyist would have to come out of the district’s approximately $33 million in reserves.

Although no specific price tag was included in Tuesday’s discussion, Sarasota School Board Superintendent Lori White advised board members that a special request for proposal (RFP) would have to be approved prior to the board reallocating funds within the budget to pay for a lobbyist.

White said district finance staff would evaluate what RFPs are available for the move and would present the approved list of options to the board prior to a vote for an official budget amendment.

Contact Nolan Peterson at [email protected]