Chair’s Message

One of this year’s highlights was our Young Lawyers Committee’s first service project, at the Section’s Fall Meeting in Louisville, Kentucky. Because that meeting was centered on land use and housing issues, the committee chose to do a tree giveaway and it was a great success with Louisville citizens.

One thing that we have always focused on in the Section of State and Local Government Law is diversity; my first job in the Section was to chair our Diversity Outreach Committee. Diversity was also one of the major foci of outgoing ABA President, Paulette Brown. I believe that as a Section, we’ve done her proud, starting with our presentations at the ABA Midyear Meeting. Our panelists for “Cars, Cars, Cars” and “Water and the Drought” represented diversity in gender, gender identity, and race. Midyear is also the meeting at which the Section designates a panel for “Hot Topics in Diversity Law.” This year’s hot topic was “Same Sex Marriage and Employee Benefits Discrimination,” particularly relevant in light of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (2015). These panels also were the result of collaborations with the Section of Antitrust Law, the Law Student Division, the Young Lawyers Division, and the Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice.

The Section continued presenting diverse panelists at our 2016 Spring Meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico, attended by President Brown, where we continued our great partnership with the Section of Public Contract Law and collaborated with the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity. I am extremely proud that the Colegio de Abogados de Puerto Rico (The Puerto Rican Bar Association) and their President, Mark Anthony Bimbela, hosted a reception for President Brown and our Spring Meeting attendees. Colegio members shared with us, not only the ups and downs of practicing law in Puerto Rico, but also their culture and traditions in food and music. We had a marvelous time!

I would be remiss if I did not highlight some of the Section’s important publications during the past bar year. We published The Municipal Law Deskbook, America Votes! (3rd ed.), Sword and Shield: A Practical Approach to Section 1983 Litigation (4th ed.), and Ferguson’s Fault Lines: the Race Quake that Rocked a Nation. The Municipal Law Deskbook is a must-have resource for any attorney practicing in-house with a local government agency or as outside counsel for such an agency, as is America Votes (3rd ed.) for any attorney helping state and local governments deal with election issues in the fast approaching presidential election.

In light of the recent tragic confrontations with police officers in this country, I would like to emphasize Sword and Shield (4th ed.) and Ferguson’s Fault Lines. Sword and Shield has been fully updated since the 2006 publication of the 3rd edition. Ferguson’s Fault Lines, edited by Professor Kimberly Jade Norwood, is invaluable for understanding the racial background underlying the controversies we all face in this country. I submit that this book is one of the most important of our time. It is the subject of webinars, including a free ABA webinar available to all members, and is for sale, at an affordable price, in Barnes & Noble bookstores and online.

Finally, as I close, I would like to thank everyone who has supported me during my year as Section Chair—my colleagues who gave me this opportunity and worked with me every step of the way; my family and friends; and finally, our Section Director, Tamara Edmonds Askew, without whom nothing gets done. There are more things I could say, but I’ll stick with “Wow, what a year!” I am eternally grateful to have been a part of it all.