CLEVELAND, Ohio – A company whose president donated $10,000 to Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne’s campaign later received a $120,000 no-bid lobbying contract from the county.
The year-long contract to McCaulley&Company was approved unanimously during a Feb. 21 Board of Control meeting, following a recommendation from the county executive’s office, according to county documents. The Board of Control also unanimously approved an exemption from competitive bidding on the contract – even though the county interviewed multiple firms before approving its last federal lobbying contract.
County spokesman Tyler Sinclair said the McCaulley contract received an exemption from competitive bidding because a bidding process could have lasted beyond April 19, when the current federal lobbying contract, with Squire Patton Boggs, is set to expire.
“Advocacy for earmarks and other federal requests are ongoing,” Sinclair said in a follow-up email. “We needed continuity and no chance for lapse to maximize on the opportunities for the county to obtain federal funding.”
Later this year, Cuyahoga County plans to use a formal bidding process for federal lobbying services, Sinclair said.
“We had to make a decision quickly,” Sinclair said.
As for why Cuyahoga County chose McCaulley, Sinclair said it was because the firm has strong credentials and is “well-known and respected.”
It’s unclear why the county didn’t extend the contract with Squire Patton Boggs, a Cleveland-based firm that also operates more than 40 offices internationally.
McCaulley is based in Cleveland, as well, and the firm specializes in federal and state lobbying, public relations, grant writing, marketing and more, according to its website. The company has worked with groups such as Northeast Ohio Public Energy Council (NOPEC) and the DeKalb County Central United School District, an Indiana school district of 3,800 students, according to McCaulley’s website.
The company’s president, Justin McCaulley, is an Ohio native who has been working in government relations since 2002. In 2022, he donated four separate times to Ronayne’s campaign. On May 10, 2022, he wrote a $1,000 check to Ronayne’s campaign; on July 22 of that year, he donated another $1,000; on September 12 he donated $5,000 and on October 19 he donated $3,000 to Ronayne’s campaign, campaign finance records show.
Cleveland.com has attempted to reach McCaulley for comment.
The contract to McCaulley&Company was more lucrative, per year, than the previous three-year, $225,000 contract with Squire Patton Boggs for lobbying the federal government.
The no-bid approval was a departure from county precedent.
The Squire Patton Boggs contract, approved in April 2020, was made after the county interviewed nine firms for the job, Michele Pomerantz, then-director of the county’s Department of Regional Collaboration, said during the April 20, 2020 Board of Control meeting.
Pomerantz’s department – not the county executive – recommended approval of the Squire Patton Boggs contract, according to county documents.
Both the 2020 and the 2023 contracts were approved through Cuyahoga County’s Board of Control. That board approves contracts worth less than $500,000 and is comprised of the county executive, county council members and county staff.
While the county executive has a seat on the board of control, it’s common for them to send an alternate. During the February 2023 meeting, where the McCaulley contract was approved, Ronayne sent Katherine Gallagher, the chief of Operations and Community Innovation, as his alternate, according to meeting minutes.
When the 2020 federal lobbying contract was approved, staff said during the meeting it was the first time in recent memory the county was hiring federal lobbyists. A driving factor in that decision was dysfunction in the federal Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, Board of Control members said at the 2020 meeting.
More specifically, former Cuyahoga County Councilwoman Nan Baker and current County Councilman Dale Miller worried that small businesses were being sidelined in the first-come-first-serve PPP program, as larger companies with deeper pockets were sopping up the federal cash. Their fear was later shown to be well-founded.