Julie Meier Wright blames fines on assistant

San Diego — The chief executive officer of San Diego's taxpayer-funded Economic Development Corp. and a big backer of last year's failed campaign to move the airport to Miramar, Julie Meier Wright, has quietly agreed to pay a $300 fine to the city's ethics commission for failing to file quarterly reports disclosing her city hall lobbying activities from April 2006 through this past January. Back in March of last year Wright was quoted by the Union-Tribune as saying she'd decided to register as a lobbyist after the paper reported her name had been popping up on the calendars of city council members. In a March 11 letter to the city clerk, Wright blamed her failure to file on "a wide variety of performance issues that I had with my executive assistant." The commission also took up "a request from another law enforcement agency for copies of the Commission's investigative files in one or more closed matters," according to the agenda of the board's June 14 meeting. A commission spokesman says that an ad hoc board subcommittee has been formed to deal with the matter, which he declined to provide details of.