In late May, Mayor Anthony A. Williams officially renamed the Office of the Corporation Counsel the Office of the Attorney General. The new nomenclature was supposed to be another step toward statehood. But for the office’s staff, the name change has worked all too well. According to Attorney General spokesperson Tarifah Coaxum, the office has received nearly two dozen missives meant for U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. The errant letters are rerouted to Ashcroft’s office with a form letter explaining the mix-up, while another form letter addressing the city’s name change is sent to the mistaken sender. “It’s part of doing the business of the office,” Coaxum says, adding that before the name change the office got a lot of bad mail anyway, mostly from folks who believed it was a real corporation. “Honestly, the most common misperception would be that people had no understanding whatsoever of what we did.” —Jason Cherkis