![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Marty-Lawing-NEW-1024x558.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n“How did y’all choose a racist to be our city manager?” said Lee County NAACP President, James Muwakkil<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Lee County NCAAP President mincing no words Tuesday when discussing Marty Lawing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He says Lawing isn’t fit for the job after recently learning that he was named in several lawsuits while working in local government in North Carolina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One lawsuit, brought forward more than a year ago accuses Lawing, then the Guilford County Manager of upholding the wrongful termination of a black county employee<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Several years before that, while working as the Brunswick County Manager Lawing was named in legal proceedings, that dealt with efforts to place a landfill <\/a>in a mostly black neighborhood<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Mr. Lawing has done some things that I don’t think would make him the best manager for this county,” said Carolyn Coleman during a 2013 Guilford County Commission meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That landfill case and allegations about discriminatory hiring practices gave some Guilford County Commissioners pause when Lawing was considered for the role of county manager in 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That said, he was ultimately still hired for the job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “People get sued because of what they’ve done or what they’ve failed to do,” said Muwakkil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We took all of these concerns to Fort Myers Mayor Kevin Anderson, who said he’s aware of them, but added that lawsuits come with certain titles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “What some people may not know is since being elected in November, I have been sued, not for anything I did individually just by virtue that I hold this position,” said Anderson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mayor Anderson also rejected claims that Lawing could be labeled a “racist.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “If there was any question in my mind that any of those candidates were racist, they wouldn’t have gotten an interview from me,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That said it is clear that some in the black community in Fort Myers and beyond, have concerns about Lawings practices and past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mayor Anderson says he’s confident the new city manager can overcome that hurdle in Southwest Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “He will show the city of Fort Myers that he is a professional city manager who’s gonna do a great job for the entire city of Fort Myers,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We did reach out to the city to ask for some kind of response from Mr. Lawing himself, but we haven’t heard back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wednesday’s meeting to discuss his salary and contract will be at 4:30 pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Fort Myers City Manager is already under fire less than two weeks after being picked. “How did y’all choose a racist to be our city manager?” said Lee County… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":48716,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48714"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}