An attorney for the Community Airfields Association of San Diego argued in a letter today that the report on the Sunroad office building released by the Mayor’s Office is inaccurate, the second time in as many weeks that a lawyer close to the case has complained about the investigation’s findings.
Gerald Blank, a lawyer for the group, said a crucial letter from Mayor Jerry Sanders was “glaringly absent” from the cache of records Sanders ethics chief JoAnne SawyerKnoll used to craft the report. The letter, sent May 18 to the Federal Aviation Administration, states that Sanders was trying to divert traffic away from the structure in order to accommodate the building at heights above the 160-foot ceiling set by the FAA. It’s one of the several instances in which Sanders pursued alternatives to strictly enforcing the FAA’s height limit.
In her report, SawyerKnoll said the mayor rejected the idea outright, but she omitted the document that said otherwise from the sources she references throughout the 40-page report. In an recent article by San Diego CityBeat, SawyerKnoll said she had no idea why the May 18 letter was left out.
“My client feels you missed a very important issue, should question the Mayor about it, and issue a clarification,” Blank said.
He continued:
At face value, it appears to be an inexplicable contradiction. Perhaps there is an answer. Absent the Mayor’s response, the issue presently screams of cover-up.