Don Beason's biggest contract was with Catawba County.
According to a review of his client list this year, the once-top lobbyist was paid nearly $33,000 to represent a county of 151,000 people having a water dispute with its neighbors.
That's almost four times what Progress Energy paid him, almost eight times the size of his IBM contract and more than 11 times what he earned from AT&T.
Only one other corporate client, Sigma Corp., came close with its $27,000 contract.
As a public entity, Catawba could not pay Beason with a second contract — ostensibly for something other than lobbying — that it did not have to report to the Secretary of State.
So its contract is likely close to what Beason actually charges. That means his major corporate clients, including Progress Energy, IBM, AT&T, Colonial Life Insurance and BB&T, likely paid him the rest with secondary contracts. (At least one did so in a prior year.)
In fact, BB&T's $3,290.38 payments from Jan. 1 to June 30 are exactly one-tenth the $32,903.80 he earned from Catawba in that same time frame.
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