A note to Steve Padilla: Don't become like Cheryl Cox!

Is someone a little too friendly with developers?

Your opponent, Cheryl Cox, has been sliding in that direction for five years. The disgraced David Malcolm began his long slide to the wrong side of the law by doing just that. While on the California Coastal Commission, he appeared to sell himself to the highest bidder.

Don't follow in these footsteps.

You're better than that.

Cheryl Cox has gone along with the wrongdoing of the controlling majority of the board of the Chula Vista Elementary School District for half a decade. Don't be like someone who has been playing footsie with certain developers for years.


Hiding Public Records

I'm guessing that you were not part of the attack on David Rowlands, the well-respected city manager of Chula Vista who was recently forced to resign. It was the rest of the Chula Vista City Council that wanted to get rid of Rowlands, but who, to their shame, wanted to cover up the deal they made with him to get him to go away, so they paid him hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in return for signing a secrecy agreement. It was a purely political move, and the majority on the city council wanted to make sure that Rowlands couldn't reveal the truth to the public until after the November elections.

This sounds just like something Cheryl Cox would do. As a member of one of the most secretive school boards in the state, Cox has a history of thumbing her nose at the California Public Records Act and at many other California laws. For over a year I've requested public records regarding how much CVESD spends on laywers, but my requests have been ignored. Why? Because Cheryl Cox and her fellow board members think that I won't sue them. And if I do, they can just spend taxpayer dollars fighting the lawsuit.

How much will Cox and the CVESD board spend to fight public records requests? I don't know, but I do know how much the San Diego City Council has spent to fight public records requests: more than $20,000 (according to today's San Diego Union Tribune).

The last thing that the Chula Vista City Council needs is someone like Cheryl Cox as mayor.

Cheryl Cox and Chula Vista Elementary School District have worked closely with lawyers, in the process harming the proper functioning of several schools, including the notorious Castle Park Elementary, which continues to hold the attention of the media.

If you really wanted to work for the public good, why don't you take over Chula Vista Elementary School District, and fix it?

Maura Larkins