Madison DCR's Lucia Nuñez
By Jonathan Gramling
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It has been quite a whirlwind 18 months for LucÃa Nuñez who began her duties as the director of the newly-created Madison
Dept. of Civil Rights (DCR) in January 2006. It was a department that was created in the thick of intense controversy over its
creation and in addition to providing the services that the former Affirmative Action Department and Equal Opportunities
Commission provided, Nuñez was also charged with the task to blend these offices into one working entity, no small task.
For those who know her, Nuñez was probably the only person that Mayor Dave Cieslewicz could have hired who could pull off
the monumental task. Nuñez is a people person whose track record at Centro Hispano and at the Wis. Dept. of Workforce
Development showed that she engaged her staff in decision making and would include them in the process of creating the new
department.
During the past month, Nuñez and the DCR staff moved into their new offices on the fifth floor of the City-County Building,
completing the physical transformance of the unification of the old departments that Nuñez had embarked on a year earlier. It's a
renovated space with new furniture reflective of the new department.
The move seems to have buoyed Nuñez's spirits. "I think the movement of the staff into one office is going well," she said
during an interview with The Capital City Hues. "I think there are a lot of things that we still need to iron out such as the
administrative systems of two separate agencies that affect everything from ordering supplies to payroll. How are we going to do
them now that we are just one? We've had some planning in this and we're in the process of ironing those things out. EOD and
AAD and the Disability Rights and Services program continue to do the work they are supposed to be doing. They're charging
along. We're training a new investigator, Claudia Contota who replaced David López. David went to DHFS as the AA/EEO
coordinator. The office is pretty nice. I'm excited."
It is now the task of Nuñez and DCR to build upon the accomplishments of their predecessors as they take Affirmative Action
efforts to the next level. "If you look at our overall numbers, the bottom line of how many city employees are people of color - there
are 2,500 city employees without counting seasonal employees - our numbers are good," Nuñez said, keeping in mind that
urban governments have historically employed a higher number of relatively new entry groups until they become established in the
private sector. "There is some good diversity. There are some areas where we can improve. I think we need to improve on all
levels in terms of the Asian community."
While the overall numbers look good for the city, when one looks at specific areas of city employment, areas of the
underemployment of people of color and women become evident that are compensated by relatively high areas of employment in
other sectors of city employment.
"Police, Fire, Madison Metro are the largest in terms of employees with 300-400 people each," Nuñez observed. "Streets is
another. And you see a lot of diversity -- racial and ethnic minorities represented in those areas. When you look at seasonal
employment with Streets or Parks, it looks good. Then you see some agencies where maybe they have a huge clerical pool, so
you will see an overrepresentation of women. There are very few men in the clerical area, same with nursing where Public
Health's nurses are predominantly women."
Perhaps the biggest challenge for city government and DCR is the retention of people of color and women and their
advancement into the middle and upper management positions within city government. "As you climb higher into the organization,
that's where you start seeing some bigger gaps that we need to look at," Nuñez said. "We're underutilized for women in top
management positions. We need to address that. There are some areas in particular such as engineering and some of the
technical trades staff, we may have women, but we don't have a lot of racial and ethnic minorities. That's reflective of the general
population. The schools are still not recruiting many people of color into the sciences and are producing engineers."
And as the baby boom generation continues to retire, city government is going to have to become adept at attracting, retaining
and advancing women of color or city services will suffer. "We're going to see that exodus from city, state and private entities,"
Nuñez said. "Do we have enough people positioned to take over?"