Lawyer's $300,000 Bill For 53 Days Work Angers NYC

New York City will be out $82 million, when it's forced to pay back wages to all the black firefighters it didn't hire, a judge ruled earlier this month. It also has to hire 186 black firefighters. The city will cough up at least another $300,000 to the lawyer in charge of hiring that new, diverse class.

The appointment of Mark Cohen, a former federal prosecutor, as the monitor of the Fire Department's hiring was controversial from the start. The city had no objection to the lawyer himself, but thought the very idea of a monitor was unnecessary, reported the Daily News. The city is all the more frazzled now that it's been handed a bill of $310,759 for Cohen's 53 days of employment.

U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis ruled last October that the city's Fire Department was "a stubborn bastion of white male privilege."