JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — There’s a City Hall showdown brewing between Mayor Donna Deegan and Councilman Nick Howland. Howland is raising concerns about the mayor’s decision to hire a new lobbying firm without competitive bidding.
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Republican Councilman Nick Howland said that his office is investigating the single-source contract between the Mayor’s Office and its new lobbying firm, Langton Consulting.
The firm was hired at $300,000 a year in taxpayer money. Langton offers grant writing and research, public policy development and federal advocacy support.
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Howland wants Deegan’s staff to attend the next city finance meeting in November, hoping to pressure the mayor into terminating the contract and run a competitive solicitation.
“Show us all single-source contracts from July 1 to Sept. 30. There will be probably 20 to 30 to review that are over $50,000. One will be the Langton Consulting contract, and I’d expect there would be a lot of questions about it,” Howland told Action News Jax.
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Action News Jax’s Ben Ryan reached out to the Mayor’s Office about the investigation, and her team sent this statement saying, “Langton Consulting is the only firm we found that offers grant writing, lobbying and policy development together … [W]e moved quickly, so the city doesn’t miss any more grant deadlines.”
The statement echoes what Mayor Deegan told Action News Jax in an interview in October.
The statement also says, “As Councilman Howland very well knows through several meetings with my team, this contract went through a transparent process in the Procurement Office without objection. There have been 218 direct contacts over $50,000 since he was sworn into office. Why now? It’s all politics.”
“What I think is fishy about the sole source justification [is] there’s at least 3 or 4 organizations in the city and plenty statewide and nationwide that do this activity, so you can’t justify a single-source contract on [a] flimsy decision,” Howland said in response.
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The city also told Ryan that Langton Consulting produces results for its clients, with $27 million in federal and state grants for the City of Key West and $65 million for Osceola County over the past 18 months.
The contract that Councilman Howland is attacking is no different than the single-source contract that the City Council awarded to their stadium negotiation consultant earlier this year. It was done for speed and unique expertise, according to their thinking at the time.
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