A volatile feud between Atlanta's mayor and former airport director is apparently over, but neither side will disclose terms of the agreement they reached.%
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The former general manager of Atlanta's Hartsfield Jackson International Airport, Miguel Southwell, basically accused Mayor Kasim Reed of meddling in high-dollar airport contracts.
The mayor then implied the airport manager had committed some sort of crimes.
"If [Southwell] continues this path I'm going to make public why he was fired. And he knows, that not only could I have fired him, I could have pressed charges against him if had chosen to do so," said Reed in June.
Reed never really gave a specific reason for firing Southwell, publicly mentioning long TSA wait times, which plagued many big cities at that time.
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After his firing, Southwell threatened to sue the city.
His attorney sent a scathing letter accusing senior city officials of trying to manipulate who got highly lucrative concession and construction contracts at the airport.
He said "those same senior officials represented that these directions were originating from the 'second floor' or 'the mayor'."
Reed fumed about it.
Disputes like that don't usually just disappear, but in a joint statement released Tuesday, all fences appear to have been mended.
The statement was supposedly "issued in the interests of complete transparency," but it doesn't give many details of the agreement, other than to say, "Mayor Reed and Mr. Southwell had an opportunity to exchange additional information."
It goes on to say "they both now agree that neither of them engaged in any civil or criminal wrongdoing," and "their differences were more a matter of style than substance."
Atlanta communications director Anne Torres told Channel 2 Action News investigative reporter Jodie Fleischer no payment accompanied the agreement, which amounts to just the one-page statement.
Fleischer filed an open records request for any documentation regarding the agreement and, according to the city, there is none except for the statement.
Click and read the joint statement in its entirety here.
Cox Media Group
