Consulting, State Governmental Relations Services

The City of St. Petersburg is requesting proposals for state governmental relations consulting services to represent the city before the Florida Legislature, its committees, and Executive agencies, with a proposal due date of May 8, 2025 at 3:00 p.m. The vendor must be a registered Florida lobbyist with at least three years of experience in state legislative and executive lobbying consulting for large urban cities and must provide all services without subcontractors.

Vendors certified as Small Business Enterprise (SBE), Minority Business Enterprise (MBE), or Women Business Enterprise (WBE) by the City of St. Petersburg receive additional evaluation points—3 points per certification status.

The scope encompasses legislative session services, overall advocacy strategy development, and informative/educational support. The consultant will meet with the Mayor's Office to develop legislative agendas, track and analyze potential legislation, draft and support legislative initiatives, secure budget appropriations, facilitate meetings with legislative delegations, monitor rulemaking, identify state grant funding opportunities, and provide regular strategic guidance. Deliverables include detailed research and informational materials such as budget analyses, committee hearing reports, white papers, and grant opportunity assessments. The consultant will coordinate with the Mayor's Office, City Council, state legislative leadership, state agencies, and local partners including the Pinellas County School Board and other municipal entities.

The contract term is two years from execution with two one-year renewal options available by mutual agreement. The consultant will be paid monthly, with the maximum annual price to be determined. The consultant must maintain commercial general liability insurance of at least $1 million per occurrence, workers' compensation insurance, and professional liability/errors & omissions insurance of $1 million per occurrence.

Evaluation criteria are capacity to accomplish work and staffing (23 points), experience of firm and references (20 points), project approach and proposal (32 points), and detailed cost proposal (16 points), totaling 100 points. The City anticipates recommending an award to City Council on July 10, 2025.