Assistant City Manager Kevin Stokes serves as Chief Labor Relations Officer, the liaison to all departments regarding the collective bargaining process and the implementation of the collective bargaining agreements. The City of Alexandria’s Public Employee Collective Bargaining Ordinance was developed to promote orderly and constructive relationships between the City and its employees and ensure an uninterrupted, efficient government. The ordinance allows unions or associations representing City employees to enter into a collective bargaining contract with the City on matters related to the employees and their employment.

Stokes began his public service career with the Virginia Division of Legislative Services, where he drafted legislation for state lawmakers and advised Virginia General Assembly committees, including the Senate Committee on Local Government and the House Committee on Counties, Cities, and Towns. He spent six years with the District of Columbia’s Office of Labor Relations and Collective Bargaining (OLRCB), where he represented the District’s agencies in collective bargaining and advised them in all aspects of labor relations. He also represented management before the D.C. Public Employee Relations Board in unit determinations, unfair labor practice, negotiability appeals and impasse proceedings. In 2016, he became OLRCB’s Chief of Staff, directing day-to-day administrative activities and supervising the Research, Training and City-wide Initiatives Unit and the Administrative and Program Support Unit.

Before joining the City, Kevin Stokes was part of the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), the District of Columbia’s state educational agency, where he provided legal advice interpreting special education law and OSSE’s collective bargaining agreements with labor organizations. Most recently, he served as the agency’s Interim General Counsel, where he supervised a team of attorneys, interns and a paralegal, all of whom were responsible for advising educational officials on employment and labor matters, student health issues, data management and special education law.

Stokes earned his law degree from the University of Iowa and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia, where he double majored in Foreign Affairs and African-American and African Studies.