Photo: District Attorney Bonnie DumanisDA ends probe of land sale to college
San Diego Union Tribune
By Jennifer Vigil
December 14, 2008
The District Attorney's Office has cleared everyone involved in a land sale to the San Diego Community College District that benefited two politically connected developers.
The investigation has been closed, and “no criminal charges are forthcoming against any individual or entity involved in this matter,” District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis wrote in a Thursday letter to the college district.
Dumanis' office looked into a September 2006 real estate deal in which the district paid $1.28 million for a 15th Street duplex for a campus expansion downtown.
Questions arose about the purchase after The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that the developers, Mike Madigan and Paul Nieto, had bought the parcel eight months earlier for $750,000 and used a private trust held by Nieto's father-in-law to sell it to the college district.
Madigan was involved in San Diego's downtown redevelopment efforts, and Nieto is a former president of a Chula Vista homebuilding company and once sat on the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority Board.
In correspondence sent to the duplex owners in 2004 and 2005, a real estate broker indicated the developers were speaking on behalf of the college district, a link that investigators found had not been formalized.
Deputy District Attorney Mike Still, who investigated the land transactions, said Madigan, Nieto and their broker may have made misleading statements, but a one-year statute of limitations had expired on any possible misdemeanor charges.
Felony fraud charges also were considered but dismissed as too harsh, Still said.
“We found some misrepresentations on the front end, but they may have been misunderstandings as well,” he said.
Former City Attorney Michael Aguirre investigated the matter and filed a civil suit against the broker. Still said the case was delayed pending the outcome of his investigation...
The district continues to plan construction on 15th Street, part of a $1.5 billion bond-funded renovation and expansion campaign, but more properties must be acquired. Jennifer Vigil: (619) 718-5069; jennifer.vigil@uniontrib.com
2 comments:
Isn't it interesting that when the people holding the power do questionable things, they are mistakes, but when the teachers allegedly do things, they warrant full punishment? If that doesn't show White Chalk Crime, I don't know what does! I was just thinking about how Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a name that needs no explanation, gets to stay in his job while questionable allegations swarm him, but teachers in the state of Illinois accused of something far less serious, such as not following an order, are not allowed to teach and denied their salary until a hearing proves one way or another if they did something wrong. For teachers, a mistake means end of job. And for teachers, the state can stall the process and leave them in limbo for years, as Illinois did to me -from 4/1999 until 7/2002, when they finally produced a decision that I had to beg and plead to get so I could move my case up through the courts. Even though the law said the decision was due in 12/2000, they did as they pleased. What this article says to me is that ignoring the rule of law surely gives these powermongers leeway to keep good people down and bad people up! And we wonder why we have the country we have these days. Power to make arbitrary decisions replacing the rule of law is the reason. In education we call this White Chalk Crime and this article is certainly a prime example of it.
HERE
is a link to the site of "White Chalk Crime."
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