• At the Feb. 1 Florida Bar Board of Governors meeting in Tallahassee, Florida CFO Alex Sink had kind words for Jacksonville Area Legal Aid (JALA). According to Jacksonville Bar Association board member Giselle Carson, Sink told the board how well JALA is doing in Jacksonville battling the foreclosure issue. Sink recently met with JALA officials to talk about how the state can help.
• Speaking of Carson, she’s the new president of the First Coast Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Carson is an attorney with Marks Gray.
• And speaking of JALA, the group recently elected officers to its 2008 board of directors, including: Thomas Slater, president; Norm Gregory, first vice president; Hugh Cotney, second vice president; Vickey Murphy, secretary; and Renee Harrell, treasurer.
• One more about JALA. The Wachovia Foundation is the community’s latest supporter of JALA’s pilot program, JalaCare (Credit Abuse Resistance Education). The foundation gave a $7,500 grant to help fund the program, which teaches Duval County public school freshmen how to become financially literate and avoid predatory lending and debt.
• Tom Edwards, Howard Coker and a couple of others recently returned from a successful hunting trip in McCallen, Texas near the Mexican border. The group bagged a dozen deer and what’s called a havalina, which is wild hog indigenous to the area.
• Might be hard to believe, but attorney/lobbyist Paul Harden was at one time a track star. Proof is in the form an old newspaper clipping on City Policy Chief Adam Hollingsworth’s door.
• The law firm of Ford, Miller & Wainer has relocated its Downtown firm to the beach. The new office is at 1835 N. Third St.
“All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous Judiciary.”
– Andrew Jackson, U.S. president