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LAX seeks opponent’s records, he charges intimidation effort
by Kevin Cody
Adopting a tactic frequently used by airport opponents, attorneys for Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) filed a California Public Records Act request with the City of El Segundo for its mayor’s expense records.
"Mayor [Mike] Gordon has been critical not only of the LAX Master Plan, but of its current operations. So we wanted to find out if he uses LAX when he flies. And we found out he does," said Los Angeles International Airport public relations director Nancy Castle.
Gordon, a leader in the opposition to the proposed LAX expansion plan, thinks there was more than that to the inquiry.
"They’re trying to intimidate me. They’re saying, ‘We’ll take you down personally if you don’t stop opposing the airport expansion. This demonstrates the crisis they are in. Their dream of expansion is dead on arrival and they are holding me responsible. Now it’s payback time," Gordon said.
Gordon said he does not ask for reimbursement from the city for his mayoral expenses. He added that he has never sought reimbursement for expenses related to his opposition to the LAX expansion.
LAWA recently unveiled a $12 billion expansion plan, which would increase passenger traffic at LAX from its current 64 million passengers annually, to 89 million passengers annually.
The City of El Segundo has spent $1.7 million over the past three years to organize opposition to the expansion and to sue the airport.
Gordon said this week that about three quarters of that money has been paid to the Santa Monica public relations firm Urban Dimensions to help organize a coalition of Southern California cities opposed to the expansion. The balance has gone to the San Francisco law firm of Shute, Mihaly, and Weinberger, which represented the El Segundo in its suit against the airport.
The suit alleged that the airport was engaging in piecemeal expansion, in violation of the California Environmental Quality Act.
El Segundo filed the suit in November 1999, and dropped it last week.
Gordon said the city dropped the suit because the suit had accomplished its goal.
"Our intent was to stop the piecemeal expansion, to force the airport to work within a master plan and file appropriate environmental impact reports so the public would have the opportunity to review the airport’s plans.
"In January, attorneys for LAWA represented to the court that they are now doing that," Gordon said.
In their statement to the court, LAWA attorneys wrote that "essentially, all the allegations that they [El Segundo] were making about our past practices have now been superseded by the events of time, and those past practices are not being followed anymore…In effect, the new Master Plan studies will be substituted for the old studies."
Airport expansion critics were divided on the wisdom of El Segundo’s decision to drop its suit.
"To drop the suit after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on it is horrible. Our city council dismissed the opportunity to prove LAX was relying illegally on exemptions to the California Environmental Quality Act. What did we get in exchange? It was a sell-out," said Liz Garnholz, an El Segundo resident and opponent of the airport’s expansion.
Hermosa Beach mayor Sam Edgerton, a delegate to the LAX roundtable, also had reservations. He questioned why El Segundo didn’t exact legally enforceable concessions from LAWA in exchange for ending the suit.
Gordon said El Segundo has budgeted an additional $750,000 to its law firm and public relations firm to continue the city’s opposition to the airport expansion plan. ER