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‘Working on It’
Commissioner Wants to
See More Lawyers of Color
in City Attorney’s Office
“If you really want to diversify, you can.”
By Ryan Brown
According to Miami
City Attorney Jorge Fernandez, there are 21 lawyers working in his
office.
To get perspective
on this city department’s importance, take a look at the Office of
the City Attorney’s Web site,
www.miamigov.com/cityattorney/pages, which states that the
department’s job is to “provide legal advice and serve as counsel to
the City’s elected public officials as well as all appointed
officials, and all boards and departments.”
Of the 21 lawyers
working in Miami’s Office of the City Attorney, one is black.
“You’re going to
work on that, right?” District 5 Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones
asked Fernandez at a City Commission meeting a couple of weeks ago.
Fernandez said he
is committed to making sure he and the other lawyers “represent the
constituents we serve.”
Indeed, blacks are
a large portion of the city of Miami constituency. According to 2005
census data, 21.9 percent of the city of Miami’s population is
black.
“The American Bar
Association was in town this past week. I led the two panels on
issues of diversity in the workforce,” Fernandez said. “We are very
actively hiring and recruiting African-Americans. In my opinion we
don’t have enough, either.… It is extremely competitive out there
for African-American lawyers; they’re being constantly recruited and
hired.… Three African-American attorneys we had recently left for
jobs in the private sector and are now making twice as much as we
were paying them … it’s an issue of supply and demand.”
But some argue that
Fernandez is not putting forth significant effort to reach out to
the black community.
“If you really want
to diversify, you can,” says Tyrone Williams, who worked as a lawyer
in the City Attorney’s Office from 2003 to 2005. “African-American
groups, specifically The Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. Bar Association, the
Caribbean Bar Association and The Haitian Bar Association are
constantly referring persons who are seeking employment,
specifically government-type employment…if you really want to reach
out to people you can,” says Williams.
“I am working on it,” says Fernandez. “It’s nothing personal
and nothing directly related to anything.”
Comments? E-mail
ryan@miamisunpost.com.
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