Former Ballwin Alderman Asks for Broader Hiring Options

Former Ballwin Alderman Jim Robinson told the Ballwin council that efforts to make future prosecution more practical will hinder the city’s ability to hire racially-diverse job applicants.

The Ballwin council approved the in February to replace Keith Cheung, who resigned shortly before being penalized for causing a mistrial last year.

Robinson said the council indicated around that time that the prosecuting attorney and provisional prosecutor should come from the same law firm, in part to make the transfer of case files more convenient.

Robinson said, however, that because so few local law offices are bi or multi-racial, the possible hiring of a white prosecuting attorney virtually guarantees another white provisional attorney if the hire is made from the same law office.

“We have very few law firms or shared office space arrangements where we would have an attorney of color [sharing an office] with a white attorney,” Robinson said. “So if this board selected a white attorney as its prosecuting attorney, it would be very difficult then, perhaps impossible, to have a provisional attorney … for an attorney of color.”

The Ballwin Board of Aldermen this week did approve an ordinance establishing guidelines for the hiring of a permanent and a provisional prosecuting attorney. The ordinance approved Monday does not address pre-existing relationships between the two attorneys.

Mayor Pogue previously said he will recommend three candidates for permanent city prosecutor, which he’ll select while using a “blind matrix” to score candidates’ résumés. The city human resources director will omit the names of the candidates prior to Pogue’s scoring process.

“I will not know who each candidate is when I evaluate this matrix,” Pogue said in an email. “They will only be a number to me.”

The council is scheduled to hire a permanent prosecutor and provisional prosecutor by June 1.