Another Fizz follow-up: This one comes from Mayor Ed Murray's General Counsel M. Lorena Gonzalez in response to our question about the race and gender breakdown of people filling top spots on the mayor's staff and the breakdown of Murray's department head appointments. 

We obviously get the bean counting aspect of this post. However, while numbers don't capture any story in full, they provide a basic metric to gauge a commitment to diversity.

The question was triggered by the discrimination claim that former Murray spokeswoman Roz Brazel has filed; Brazel, who is African American, was demoted earlier this year after she: 1) sent out a press release saying  former neighborhoods department director Jim Diers had died (he hadn't), labor activist Joe Dear had, and 2) inadvertently CC'd the press on an email to her director Jeff Reading floating alternate versions of Murray's statement about the fact that the legislature finally passed the DREAM Act—one cheery, one snarky.  

Brazel's claim places the blame for the gaffes on her supervisor Jeff Reading and on the mayor himself. The claim also notes that Brazel's ultimate replacement, a white male, Jason Kelly, makes $100,000 to her $95,000. (The spot was filled temporally by a white women, Megan Coppersmith.) 

Brazel's claim against the city, which seeks damages of $1 million, also gets into some office hierarchy politics: 

"Ms. Brazel was assigned to ride in the mayor's car with him to certain media interviews and events. She was instructed that she was not to speak to him while in the car with him. All during her tenure with the Mayor's office, Mayor Murray was cool and aloof when relating to Ms. Brazel—often snapping at her about media events she had scheduled for him. However, at times when he spoke to other managerial staff he was affable and friendly, an affect he never had with Ms. Brazel." 

Gonzalez tells us: "Ms. Brazel was not in a position of management during her time at the Mayor's Office. Currently, the following people are serving in positions of management at the Mayor's Office..."

And she provided us with the following list: 

Kate Joncas – Deputy Mayor

Hyeok Kim – Deputy Mayor

Chris Gregorich – Chief of Staff

M. Lorena González – General Counsel to the Mayor

Jeff Reading – Communications Director

Robert Feldstein – Director, Office of Policy and Innovation

Mike Fong – Deputy Director, Office of Policy and Innovation

Meadow Johnson – Deputy Chief of Staff

Holly Krejci – Office Manager

By our calculations (Murray's staff did not provide the race of each staffer) that means five out of nine (55 percent) are women and at least three out of nine (33 percent) are people of color.

The list of people Murray has appointed as department heads or interim department heads, are: 

SPD: Harry Bailey(Interim)

Office of Film and Music: Kate Becker

Budget: Ben Noble

Office of Civil Rights: Patricia Lally

Office of Immigration and Refugee Affairs: Cuc Vu

Human Services: Catherine Lester (Interim)

Human Services: John Okamoto (Interim)

Governmental Relations: Nick Harper

Human Resources: Susan Coskey

SDOT: Scott Kubly

Technology: Michael Mattmiller

SPD: Kathleen O’Toole

Office of Housing: Steve Walker

SDOT: Goran Sparrman (Interim)

Office of Immigration and Refugee Affairs: Aaliyah Gupta (Interim)

Community Police Commission: Fé Lopez

That means seven out of 16 (43 percent) of Murray appointments have been women.