This is the article Gerry Connolly doesn't want you to read!!!!

This article is a must read from the pages of the DC Examiner. Gerry Connolly doesn't want you to read the below.

Editorial The rest of the Tysons station storyThe Washington DC Examiner Newspaper, The Examiner2007-07-05 07:00:00.0Current rank: # 1,061 of 3,572

WASHINGTON - In today’s letters column, Fairfax County Spokeswoman Merni Fitzgerald demands a written retraction for The Examiner’s June 18 op-ed on the Dulles Rail project’s “winners and losers.” The Examiner stands by that op-ed.

We said the Tysons Central 7 Station was added to the project by Fairfax County Board of Supervisor chairman Gerald Connolly “in 2002, three weeks before taking a job at SAIC.” Fitzgerald claims that is wrong because the Tysons Central 7 Station “in this location dates back to an amendment to the county’s comprehensive plan adopted by the Fairfax Board of Supervisors on June 27, 1994.” When asked for clarification, she referred us to the comprehensive plan approved in 1994, which “envisions three rapid transit stations. … ” one of which would be located “on Route 7 west of Westpark Drive.”

In fact, Fitzgerald is playing a Clintonesque word game because there is nothing in the June 27, 1994, minutes directing the project to include a fourth rail station at its present planned location 1,000 feet east of Westpark with an entrance on the north side of Route 7 at SAIC’s doorstep. The amendment Fitzgerald cites refers only to the idea of a station in the west area. The vote to specify the east location was, as The Examiner described it, on Oct. 28, 2002. As the Providence District board member, Connolly worked with board staff on the Locally Approved Alternative (LPA) option that directed the east location.

Fitzgerald did point out one error we readily acknowledge: Our June 18 oped stated that Connolly voted for the LPA “three weeks before taking a job at SAIC.” The vote actually occurred three weeks after Connolly was hired as SAIC’s director of community relations. According to the official minutes of the Oct. 28 meeting and people interviewed by The Examiner who were in attendance, Connolly voted for the LPA without disclosing his ties to SAIC or recusing himself on a measure that clearly benefited his new employer.

The Code of Virginia forbids any local government official from accepting “any business or professional opportunity when he knows there is a reasonable likelihood that the opportunity is being afforded him to influence him in the performance of his official duties.” State law also requires conflict of interest disclosures to “be reflected in the public records of the agency for five years,” but there is no record of any such disclosure by Connolly at the Oct. 28 meeting.

Two years later, Connolly did disclose his SAIC connection at the Feb. 23, 2004, board meeting that created the Tysons Corner tax district, but he again failed to recuse himself from voting on a project that would directly benefit his employer.

We’ll leave it to Examiner readers to decide whether this is acceptable behavior on the part of a local official elected to safeguard the public interest — and whether it’s appropriate for a public information officer such as Fitzgerald to resort to such obfuscation to defend it.