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Latinos want bigger role in Nutter administration

WHILE MAYOR Nutter has basked in popular approval and widespread political support during his first year in office, at least one constituency is not so happy with City Hall.

Quinones-Sanchez
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WHILE MAYOR Nutter has basked in popular approval and widespread political support during his first year in office, at least one constituency is not so happy with City Hall.

Several Latino leaders say that they feel neglected and ignored by the Nutter administration. High-level Latino appointees are scarce, they say, and not one Latino has a role in his Cabinet.

"It's been a concern from Day One, an issue of diversity, or lack thereof," said City Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez.

The councilwoman noted that last month, of nine people named to the Mayor's Advisory Task Force on Ethics and Campaign Finance Reform, none was Latino.

"You don't think, 'OK, how do I make this list diverse?' He has to send this message to his team: 'You should have a diverse list,' " Quinones-Sanchez said. "I think that can only come from him."

For his part, Nutter said in an interview last week: "I feel very strongly about my commitment to the empowerment of people in the Latino community."

The mayor cited three Latinos in his administration: Budget Director Stephen Agostini; Israel Colon, director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs; and Gloria Casares, the city's liaison to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.

Additionally, 26 Latinos sit on city boards or commissions, which Nutter called "important agencies" that help shape city policy. (A 27th appointee, Happy Fernandez, is counted as Latino, but is not.)

And Cynthia Figueroa, a former executive director of Women Against Abuse whom Nutter appointed to the city's Commission on Human Relations in July, was recently named deputy commissioner of community-based prevention at the city's Department of Human Services.

The city had 151,517 Latinos, or about 10 percent of the population, in the 2006 census.

And, according to the Philadelphia Office of Human Resources, as of September a larger percentage of Latinos worked in city government (5.03 percent) than in 2000 (3.54 percent).

But some Latino leaders want visibility in the Nutter administration.

"There are no [Latino] people in power, in the Cabinet where they make decisions," Napoleon Garcia, publisher of the weekly Spanish-language newspaper Impacto Latino, said in a recent interview.

The city's highest-ranking Hispanic is budget director Agostini, who sits in on Cabinet meetings when Nutter asks him to.

"They didn't even know he was Latino," Quinones-Sanchez said of officials in the Nutter administration. "We had to tell them."

Nostalgia for Street

Quinones-Sanchez and other Latino leaders look with nostalgia on former Mayor John F. Street's administration, when prominent Latinos included the managing director (Pedro Ramos), city solicitor (Nelson Diaz and Romulo Diaz) and commissioner of the Department of Human Services (Alba Martinez).

Before becoming mayor in 2000, Street had served on City Council representing North Philadelphia and Fairmount, forming close relationships with Latinos in those communities. Nutter, by contrast, had been a City Councilman representing parts of West Philadelphia, Roxborough, East Falls and Manayunk, a district with fewer Latinos.

However, Nutter's earliest political mentor was former City Councilman Angel Ortiz. Their friendship continues to this day, a fact that irks some in the Latino community - a few of whom have called Ortiz the "gatekeeper" to Nutter's administration. They're concerned that the mayor solely relies on Ortiz for possible job candidates.

But even Ortiz says that the mayor has a Latino problem. "There was an expectation that [inclusion of Latinos in city government] would continue and grow with Michael," Ortiz said in a recent interview.

"It's something he knows, that there is a current out there that he has not reached out enough [to] certain sectors of our community."

Fueled by a rumor

Recent chatter regarding the Nutter administration's relationship with the Latino community was prompted by an incorrect rumor that briefly made the rounds among some Latinos.

It was believed that Nutter, in a Hispanic Heritage Month forum with Quinones-Sanchez on Oct. 8, told the audience that the low number of Hispanics in his administration was because there were "no qualified Latinos."

State Rep. Angel Cruz made reference to it nine days later at a charter-school opening in North Philadelphia, telling attendees that "the importance of education is a key element in our community, so that no public or elected official can say that no one is unqualified," Cruz recalled in an interview last month.

"There are a lot of qualified Latinos, and you don't have to use the same ones from the prior administration," Cruz said. "I don't see any at all in Nutter's."

At the forum, Nutter had defended his administration's approach to hiring. A tape recording of his remarks, obtained by the Daily News, shows that he said:

"I will absolutely, positively sit here and tell you that I'm not making quota hires, I'm not hiring somebody just because that happens to be the one thing that stands out in their resumé, that they happen to be Latino, African-American or white or Asian or any other color or race or creed under this God's rainbow," Nutter said then.

"We're looking for the highest-quality talent when people show up. If it fits the need and what

we're trying to get done, you'll get hired. If it doesn't, you won't."

Immediately after the meeting, Ortiz said, he received e-mails and phone calls about the mayor's remarks.

"They ask me, you know, 'What's going on?' " he said. "The explanation did not come off as well as it should have. . . . I know Michael, and he's my very close friend. I know what he can do, and he will do the right thing as his administration goes on.