Henderson could use lobbying in Raleigh as a test of whether the city needs to keep Washington lobbying firm The Ferguson Group, Mayor Clem Seifert suggested at a meeting with a Ferguson representative Monday.
The meeting with the lobbying firm’s Kareem Murphy was supposed to focus on Henderson’s lobbying priorities in Washington and the water contract with the Army Corps of Engineers but escalated into a discussion about whether the city should sign another contract: the annual deal that pays The Ferguson Group $78,000 per year.
City Manager Eric Williams and council members Mary Emma Evans, Bernard Alston, Mike Rainey and Elissa Yount joined Seifert and Murphy at the Municipal Building.
The city first hired The Ferguson Group in 2001 as the best hope for bringing federal dollars to the Kerr Lake Regional Water System and Embassy Square. The city has expanded the list of priorities over the years to cover such needs as transportation and housing.
The lobbying firm is credited with winning about $6 million in grants over four years. About half of that amount went to the Embassy project for library construction and road work. The Police Department has received $1.5 million for technology upgrades; that item was added to the priority list with the goal of contributing to the price of the new police station, but the money came through after construction. The planned widening of Beckford Drive is getting $960,000, to be combined with local and state funds. And the water system has received $780,000.
Altogether, the city has won about $20 from the federal government for each $1 it has paid The Ferguson Group.
The money to renew the lobbying contract is in the current budget, but Seifert is awaiting specific council authorization to sign the deal.
Yount questioned whether Henderson can afford to pay some $80,000 a year for a lobbyist.
She complimented Murphy on the job his firm has done for the city, but she made two comparisons to other cities to raise doubts about the contract.
First, she noted that Roanoke Rapids, a city comparable to Henderson in size and need, won $1.7 million for its airport and $1.2 million for a study through the lobbying efforts of the city’s manager and mayor, who have said Roanoke Rapids can’t afford a lobbying firm.
Second, Yount said Greenville, whose population is roughly quadruple Henderson’s, pays the same amount to The Ferguson Group as Henderson does and has received $13.8 million in federal earmarks since 2002.
Yount said the city could hire a grant writer, a position much discussed by city officials and community leaders, and still have plenty of change from the $80,000 if Henderson dropped The Ferguson Group. If the city keeps the contract, which is structured to allow cancellation each month, she said two of the prime beneficiaries and ongoing top priorities, the Embassy Square Foundation and the Kerr Lake Regional Water System, should contribute to the lobbying expenses.
“We absolutely should look into who is paying for it,” Seifert said.
But he disagreed with dropping The Ferguson Group. He said that if the lobbying firm stopped doing the work in Washington, no one in the city government would pick up the task.
To test whether Henderson can do its own lobbying, the mayor suggested seeing whether the city could handle lobbying the General Assembly and the rest of the state government on its own.
The City Council never established specific state lobbying priorities this year but took a number of issues directly to Reps. Jim Crawford and Michael Wray and Sen. Doug Berger. The General Assembly’s appropriations eventually included $4 million for the multicounty economic development hub, whose primary site covers about 1,000 acres close to Vance-Granville Community College’s main campus; $100,000 for the Vance County Tourism Department’s plans for a drag racing museum in Henderson; and $100,000 for a nonprofit foundation being established to help the Clean Up Henderson Committee replace or rehabilitate abandoned houses.
Seifert said he will seek approval to sign the Ferguson contract at the regular City Council meeting Sept. 12. He said the city shouldn’t drop the lobbying firm when the water contract with the Army Corps of Engineers is at a critical stage.
Seifert is leading a city delegation to Washington on Sept. 13 and 14 to hammer out a strategy and seek congressional support in response to the Corps of Engineers’ proposal that Henderson pay $3.455 million financed at 5.125 percent over 30 years for the right to 20 million gallons of Kerr Lake water per day.
The city’s primary strategy for years has been to push for congressional legislation that would force the corps to give Henderson more favorable terms. The idea is that the corps should figure the costs in 1974 dollars, when the two sides entered what was supposed to be a temporary water withdrawal contract, rather than 2005 dollars.
The House refused to add such language to a water development reauthorization bill, but Murphy said it’s realistic to hope that the Senate will act in Henderson’s favor and persuade the House to go along by December.
“Congress is dissatisfied with the Corps of Engineers,” Murphy said.
If Congress can’t help Henderson, however, the city needs a strategy for what to do next. People such as Yount and City Council candidate Bobby Gupton advocate accepting the corps’ offer and moving on to other issues. Assistant City Manager Mark Warren has estimated that the current offer would cost city water customers an average of no more than 77 cents per month.
“No question it’s time to make a decision and move on one way or another,” Seifert said.