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With D.C. Ties, Lobbyis McAuliffe Does A
Brisk Municipal Business
BY Katharine Gregg, Philip Marcelo, Richard C. Dujardin, Scott MacKay, Elizabeth Gudrais and Scott Mayerowitz
Journal Staff Writers
From Washington, D.C., to the Rhode Island town hall circuit, Rick McAuliffe has a knack for finding government work.
And he has proved it again by lining up likely contracts from Cumberland and North Providence to lobby and write grant applications on their behalf for money here and in Washington.
North Providence has been paying his lobbying and consulting company, the Mayflower Group, $5,000 a month since late last summer to scout out state and federal dollars, according to Mayor A. Ralph Mollis.
If the Cumberland Town Council approves the only bid submitted by last week's deadline for a new "government-relations adviser service," McAuliffe's company will net a second municipal contract worth up to $60,000 annually.
McAuliffe, of course, is a veteran political operative who helped run successful campaigns for for Lt. Gov. Charles Fogarty and U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy . He was Kennedy's Rhode Island district director until the congressman decided in April 2001 that he needed a fresh start -- and a new staff to go with it -- after nationally publicized controversies over a trashed yacht and an L.A. airport scuffle sent his poll numbers plummeting.
McAuliffe also sat on Sen. John Kerry 's national finance committee during the Massachusetts Democrat's 2004 presidential campaign.
The many friends he made along the way have kept him busy every since.
In 2003, $600,000 was tucked into the 2004 state budget for a state-financed demonstration of an untested "wide-area incident tracking system" that a Middletown company successfully pitched to state lawmakers.
The company, known as Purvis Systems Inc., had hired lobbyist McAuliffe to help them sell the product to government officials. Four days after its June 17 premiere at the State House, the House Finance Committee included money for the demonstration project in its big budget bill for the year.
A few months after he left Kennedy's office in 2001, McAuliffe and his then-business partner Tony Marcella scored the first of Mayflower Group's two $5,000-a-month contracts from North Providence, to line up money for school, ballfield and senior center renovations.
Eight months after the firm was hired in summer 2001, it had yet to snare a grant, according to a news report. But Mollis, the mayor then and now said: "I think it's just a matter of time." And, McAuliffe, in an interview late last week, said he ended up helping the town net a little over $1.5 million in federal dollars between 2002 and 2004.
After a hiatus of about a year, he returned to the North Providence payroll last year.
When asked last week if he expected to do any work on first-term Cumberland Mayor David Iwuc's reelection bid or Mollis' campaign for secretary of state, McAuliffe last week said: "Absolutely not."
He also went out of his way to make it "very clear" he has "no plans" to lobby the General Assembly delegations from either town because, he said, they do a good job on their own and "the last thing they need is a lobbyist looking oer their shoulder."
"My specialty is federal appropriations and federal grants," he said.
Though he has not yet been officially hired, McAuliffe said, Iwuc already has him working on a grant application for a new diesel exhaust system for the rescue department. The most the mayor can pay him -- without council approval -- is $5,000, McAuliffe said.
His current State House lobbying clients include Purvis; United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 328; The Center; SMG; the Rhode Island Child Care Directors' Association; the Rhode Island Association of Facilities and Services for the Aging; Professional Records; the Newport County Chamber of Commerce, Johnson & Wales University and CompuClaim.
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