Tallahassee Reports has learned that Mayor Andrew Gillum’s gubernatorial campaign paid rent to a public relations firm after he became a Director and Vice President of the firm.
The annual report for P&P Communications, which lists Gillum as a Director and Vice-President, was filed with the State of Florida on March 14, 2017. See image below.
Gillum’s campaign reports show two payments to P&P Communications totaling $12,287.50 The first payment was $2,075 on March 28, 2017 and the second payment was $10,212.50 on August 16, 2017. The purpose of the payments are listed as rent.
Gillum’s campaign headquarters for his gubernatorial campaign is listed as 1550 Melvin Street, Tallahassee, Florida. This is the same address that Gillum listed as his office for his former employer, People for the American Way Foundation.
However, a search of property records shows that P&P Communications does not own the building located at 1550 Melvin Street address. Rather, the building is owned by Sharon Lettman-Hicks, the other principal of the company.
A search for information about P&P Communications yields few results even though the company has been registered with Department of State since 2001. The group appears to have no website.
Cecka Rose Green, a former Vice-President/Director for P&P Communications, described the company as a “Tallahassee-based public affairs group specializing in public and community relations, communications, political strategies and event management.”
The relationship between Gillum and P&P Communications raises several questions.
First, is the position with P&P Communications paid employment for Mayor Gillum? If so, what are the ramifications of P&P Communications receiving payments from Gillum’s gubernatorial campaign?
Second, with Gillum already running for governor, how does his responsibilities with P&P Communications impact his responsibilities as Mayor of Tallahassee?
And third, does Gillum’s campaign actually have an office at 1550 Melvin Street? The picture we took shows no evidence of a campaign office outside the building?
Mayor Gillum’s Gubernatorial Campaign Paid Rent to His New PR Firm added by Staff on
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The city of Tallahassee underground utilities is just as corrupt as Gillum I guess he has coached them well. One of Gillam’s managers of underground utilities bought chainsaws and demolition saws during the storm from a vendor in Crawfordville that he plays golf with every Sunday. The local vendors in Tallahassee that pay utility bills and taxes lost out again guess they don’t play golf with the upper management in the underground utilities.
The FBI should subpoena the Chamber of Commerce as it has been a PR haven, enabler, overt enabler,and co-conspirator, for Yordon, Pittman, and Scott Maddox for two decades to anoint, service, and promote their clients and corrupt elected officials and shut out legitimate candidates from the process. Time to shine the light on this and whatever business transactions were transacted to the detriment and expense of the businesses and citizens the Chamber is “supposed” to serve. The PR events at Amelia Island and Sandestin, but to name a few of their senseless and absurd actions that only benefited the criminal suspects and their clients.
I am at a loss how anyone, even the presumptive trolls, could try and defend this. He gets money from donors, then uses that money to to create rental revenue for a place employing him. That part is apparently proven by his own documents.
Well revenue is used (among other things) to pay employees. Even if that is not cash he could still get
services in kind. This is but a snap shot of how donations are turned into financial gain and influence is purchased.
He has created so many snapshots at this point we can stack them up and make flip book animation. I’m excited to see how it ends.
As much as I distrust Gillium, he does (or did at some point) have a campaign office on the second floor at that location. My daughter volunteered for his campaign over the summer, but she stopped after only a couple weeks because she very much disliked him.
She turned liberal her first year of college, but at least she still has some common sense.
1) Not every question should be dignified with an answer.
2) There are too many “questions”, often buried in obscure places, to even know that half of them are being posed, much less address every single one to the satisfaction of every single person.
3) What does a campaign office “look like”at this point in the cycle? Is there a required square footage? Window size? Signage? Font? Color? That entire sentence is pointless and designed to imply wrongdoing where there is none.
Let’s just call a blog a blog. This isn’t fact based, impartial journalism — it’s an agenda and person opinion being served as such.
Let’s NOT just call this a blog! Let’s call it watchdog credible intelligent journalism where it exposes Gillum & Company’s misdeeds and their standard operating procedures as self serving, fraudulent, and criminal.
Gone are the days of their unexposed criminal frauds and crimes against the taxpayers, but their actual actions exposed for one and all to see thanks to Tallahassee Reports. Hopefully, the Tallahassee Democrat catches up soon rather than continuing their cover ups and looking the other way and even acting as shills and PR reps for the criminal suspects formally the usual suspects.
This article illustrates a proper accounting for funds by the Gillum campaign. Had the campaign been given the space by P&P I’d bet that a violation of campaign finance laws would have taken place. Further, if that space is most convenient to the candidate and staff, then it would be silly to look elsewhere. This entire article is a example of why people distrust the media at large — is proper journalism truly dead?
Annoyed Floridian, Mr. Gillum has refused to answer basic questions from the media about his activities. This article raises more questions he should answer. That is the role of journalism – investigate, report, and ask questions. I am annoyed to – with the silence of the Mayor of Tallahassee.
This is exactly the kind of thing that our esteemed president is doing over and over and no one seems to object to the funds that he has misappropriated. Wonder if this is just a republican smear campaign. Which has been ongoing since the democrats are looking good for the governor’s race.
Who exactly, is doing any “smearing”? Mr. Gillum and his other collusive commissioners at COT have the always-open option to simply NOT do anything that appears unethical, NOT violating the city charter laws, and NOT conducting suspect business “arrangements” that smack of crony deals and kickbacks of large amounts of taxpayer money to COT officials.
No one in Tallahassee is forcing them to conduct themselves in this repetitive and corrupt misuse of their office with self-enrichment schemes over a decade or more. They chose to do this in a very deliberate manner. So who is doing the “smearing” ? – the COT officials themselves have made their reputations and are responsible for their actions. Is the FBI simply wasting three years of investigation with “smearing”? How is that so, given the fact that obama administration was in power until Jan 2017? Would obama sic the FBI on people that adore his politics and emulate his tactics? Good luck with that governor’s race, I hope the Dems put Gillum at the top of the ticket.
The sad thing is that the same people who voted him in before would most likely vote for him again. I’d call it the “Marion Berry” complex.
Gillum and the other unethical folks at COT will not stop any of this until one or more of them goes to jail, hopefully for some serious time span. As for “Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?”, there are so many numerous and well-documented (by TR) cases of repetitive wrongdoing and corruption by COT officials that the question answers itself.
These people incriminated themselves over the last decade or so by their own deliberate actions – no one is “out to get them” or suddenly decided to investigate them for no good reason. They and they alone are responsible for the reputation they created for themselves. I for one am extremely happy the FBI is now investigating them, and I hope they find even more than they expected.
Gillum is as crooked as they come. Can’t run the City of Tallahassee how can he run the entire State.
Too much crime in this City lately and nothing has been done. Need to fired the Chief of Police the all this City Commissioner’s.
It’s not fair to call for firing the chief of police if it’s not HIS decision that his cops not do “police work”. The city mgr. has probably told him to “not make waves” etc. With the anti-police sentiment today, officers realize they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t, so why place themselves in a position to get in trouble? Everyone has a phone eager to video anything that happens, and thrilled to post edited video on social media. Add on the fact that many in the community refuse to cooperate with the police to clean up THEIR neighborhoods, so is it any wonder our crime rate is so high? Thank your liberal local govt.
What happened to innocent until proven guilty?
That only applies to the justice system. Out in the real world, our perception is all that is needed to condemn anybody for anything. Perception IS reality.
Using campaign funds for private interests is a felony that puts you in prison! This shows he is a poor manager of money – his own and taxpayers. Perhaps, he should tap his previous campaign treasurer, Adam Corey, to manage this campaign account…Oh, wait… he/they are under FBI investigation…they just keep digging themselves in deeper and deeper and deeper.
Where’s the “mainstream” media? Oh sorry, I forgot.
Meanwhile, another murder in Tallahassee early Wednesday morning. Looks like we are on our way to another #1 ranking in violent crime!
Just another prime example that The Great State of Florida doesn’t need or want Gilliam as our Governor. Why start off with problems.
“… a search for information…yields few results.” Tallahassee Reports: Please report when you actually know something this time
there’s no info because it’s probably a “shell” company.
Great job Steve. However, if you had not hurried up and posted this today, I’m sure the Tallahassee Democrat (AKA The Democrat Paper) would have put this out tomorrow.. and now that you have posted it, the Democrat will feel no need to write the story. Sadly, you are a one man army dealing with all this. Please stay healthy.
Just another example of how campaign funds find their way into politician’s pockets. Hey, a man’s gotta put food on the table.
Actually, the arrogance shown by our local ruling class in openly laundering taxpayer money is breathtaking. It just doesn’t seem to occur to them that there is any sort of possible downside.
This is just one example of what greedy crooked politicians will do with campaign funds when they realize (like Gillum) that they do not have a snowballs chance in H E Double Hockeysticks of winning the office they were running for.
However they are still sitting on a pile of money that George Soros and other assorted idiots donated. Lefty liberals will not give the money back…oh no…it’s just not in their nature.
It’s called campaign law violations and more commonly known as money laundering.
I just hope the FBI does not pull a Jim Comey on us; “Yes your local officials are guilty as sin but we do not feel any judge will convict them.”
Snydley – in your comment “Lefty liberals will not give the money back …it’s just not in their nature” you seem to insinuate that only a democrat (or “liberal”) would commit “a campaign law violation” or “money laundering,” but that’s something a republican (or “conservative”) would not. Is that the message you’re trying to convey?