Grand Rapids Bar Association Executive Director Kim Coleman, left, and GRBA Board President Judge Christopher Yates extend congratulations to new Grand Rapids City Attorney Anita Hitchcock at a reception for Hitchcock that GRBA sponsored along with the Women Lawyers Association of Michigan Western Region and the Floyd Skinner Bar Association. Behind Hitchcock is Phil Balkema, the former City Attorney who served 29 years before retiring in in 2008.
legal news photo by cynthia price
by Cynthia Price
Legal News
“This city is trying very hard to work towards solutions and address the community’s concerns, to create true change and make this an even greater city,” says Anita Hitchcock, new Grand Rapids City Attorney. “I’m proud I?can continue to be a part of that.”
Hitchcock has been on the job for about a month, after a full-scale countrywide search resulted in her being promoted to head of the Legal Department where she had worked for the previous 14 years.
According to her application for the position, which opened up when Catherine Mish left to become an attorney at Dickinson Wright (see Grand Rapids Legal News, 4/22/2016), she was interested in the position “because it will allow me to continue my position as a public servant within a Department that I enjoy and a city that I love.”
Initially afraid that she would miss being in court all the time, Hitchcock now finds a lot of satisfaction in resolving the challenges her new position presents.
She comments, “I don’t think people realize how much hard work goes on behind these walls. The attorneys and staff are seasoned, and they have a great deal of commitment and passion about the city.
“To run an organization of this size takes a lot of intensive work and as I look at it more closely now, I’m impressed at how well that’s been done. I’m truly happy to be a part of it not just as a lawyer, but as a public servant.”
A deep commitment to full engagement with and service to the community is one of Hitchcock’s strongest traits, as reflected in her service to the Floyd Skinner affinity bar and community groups, but it is only one of several that will help her to excel.
In addition to the direct experience of the department’s inner workings gained through her two years as Director of Criminal Enforcement and as an assistant city attorney since 2002, the Grand Rapids native has a “whatever-it-takes” work ethic and a thirst for learning everything she can about all aspects of the job.
Hitchcock already has a binder full of educational and conference opportunities of which she will take advantage.
She obtained her position with the city after graduation first from Aquinas College with a B.A. in Sociology and then from Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, and after a year as a legal secretary for the Administrative Law Judge in the Michigan Unemployment Agency.
During law school, she interned with Sixty Plus Elder Law Clinic, including legal research and analysis, document drafting, and preparation of memos for meetings, as well as interviewing and counseling clients. While at the city, from 2009 to 2013,
Hitchcock acted as staff attorney to WMU-Cooley’s Public Sector Law Clinic.
Before her legal education, Hitchcock also served as an assistant to the Director of Field Education and secretary to the Director of Recruitment and Financial Aid at Calvin College and as an in-house security officer and supervisor at Steelcase.
She also credits her life experiences with helping her face the demands of her new position. She raised her two children as a single parent while working and going to college; then, just as she was looking forward to some empty-nest time, took on the challenge of raising her grandchildren.
“You learn to balance and to multi-task. With the grandkids, well, I had to become comfortable with ‘moving’ a lot. I’m wired to keep moving and be very involved; I move people and things in my head,” she says, smiling. “But even more, I had to become real organized.”
One of the first tasks Hitchcock has tackled as City Attorney is to reorganize the 11-attorney and 5-administrator personnel chart of the department, and she very methodically meets with other city department heads and determines what training she needs to help her make a great department even greater. She also is looking at adding a case management system to track the exact status of each case efficiently.
“Part of my focus is not just to provide great legal services, which shouldn’t be difficult because we have a lot of very bright, very zealous attorneys who are a pleasure to work with, but to strive to be even greater by stepping outside of the legal aspects of the job and be more community-involved. I want our attorneys to be on boards and community service groups so they can get a sense of they people they serve,” she says.
Hitchcock’s pride shows again when she talks about the City of Grand Rapids outreach to its residents. “The city is trying very hard to do the right thing with some of these problems, like housing and law enforcement. I’ve seen it even in the short time since I started. Our mayor and our commission really are concerned about all our citizens, and they’re soliciting the voices of all the people, but some of these solutions take a long time.”
Hitchcock advises concerned residents to become more involved, serve on boards and pitch in to help. At the same time, she intends not to limit the advisory aspect of her current position to letting officials know what they cannot do, but expand to exploring how other cities are pro-actively, even experimentally, addressing the issues.
“I have to put in another plug for the city,” she says. “In the world of diversity and inclusion, we’re not just looking at fixing little pocket areas, but looking at the whole system, because if you don’t change the system and the mindset, you don’t really solve anything permanently.
“The mayor and city commission, the staff, this department, I give everyone a lot of credit. I truly am proud to have this position.”
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