Come to the Hearing on Wednesday, March 14, 2024 at 10 am.
Tomorrow morning, March 14, at 10 am, my colleagues, whom I always have treated better than they have treated me, and the CEO of the agency that I was elected to oversee, plan to strip me of most of my official duties and take away a large part of my pay, based primarily based on my alleged “discrimination against men” at this male-dominated agency.
Read about what they intend to do here:
Participate or watch here: https://valleywater.zoom.us/j/84454515597
The reasons they seek to silence me have nothing to do with discrimination, and little to do with me personally. They seek to silence me in response to the complaints I have made, and continue to make, to the federal and state government about their willful and knowing violations of state and federal law. Those violations include, but are not limited to, Valley Water’s intentional misrepresentations on their applications for California Prop 1 grants, and similar intentional misrepresentations made on their applications for EPA WIFIA loan funding. Those grants, and that loan, were partially granted. I contend that they were granted under false pretenses, and I can prove it.
But it is will be harder for me to prove it when they have silenced my ability to ask questions, retrieve documents, and advocate for the community against their egregious misappropriation of public money. And it is harder for me to get the attention of the federal and state authorities given the mullti-million dollar use of public funds to discredit me, including by means of a non-independent investigatory report, by payments made to a pay-to-play news blog whose stories are republished without inquiry by lazy news websites, and by a constant stream of negative emails and press releases issued by individuals and organizations, the vast majority of whom may have received campaign donations or other bribes by Valley Water’s CEO.
But you won’t hear anything about that tomorrow. Instead you will hear about an alleged investigation report that found me to have harassed the CEO and District Counsel (and the Chair of the Board) based on their gender (male), age (baby boomer), and national origin (when I repeated back the chair’s words to me, that I should use words easier than “ad hominem” when discussing *speech codes* because “English is not her first language”). That report allegedly affirmed 7 of the 25 allegations against me, including in addition to the above, telling the District Counsel that he was wrong in order to humiliate him, and not in order to change his actions. Even when a Superior Court used almost exactly my language and reasoning in ruling against the District Counsel, and when that Court assessed the six-figure penalties I told the District Counsel would be assessed, this District Counsel stuck to his story that I corrected him to embarass him, and because he was — as the court confirmed — completely incorrect in his interpretation of the law. And even though it was this District Counsel who, based both on his incompetence and on his male arrogance in refusing to be corrected by a woman who knew more and better than him, lost taxpayers and ratepayers approximately $2 million due to his arrogance and sexism, it is I, for correcting him, and not the District Counsel, for sidelining me and disregarding my correct advice, who is being punished.
(Here is where I must mention that this non-independent investigator also investigated whether there was any sexism against women at Valley Water, and despite decades of evidence and conclusions to the contrary, rejected any claim that anyone in power at Valley Water has demonstrated even the smallest amount of discrimination against women. The irony.)
My colleagues and the CEO are planning to censure me and take away my pay and duties, even though they never have censured anyone in the past: not even the executives who misappropriated $5 million to $10 million of public money. Not to the CEO that has purchased millions of dollars of technology products that were never integrated without Board knowledge or consent. Not to the former Board Director who was found to have harassed 20 different employees and community members, and whose investigation sustained the vast majority of claims against him.
No female elected official anywhere in our country ever has been censured, much less had her job taken away from her or lost any pay, ever, on the basis of “discrimination against men” within the context of a male-dominated workplace. When it comes to government agencies in the US, the vast majority of them, like Valley Water, are male-dominated workplaces. Tomorrow you will see history being made.
Do you think this is appropriate? If not, please follow along and consider speaking. Meeting information, with links in the agenda to the Zoom link, are here:
https://scvwd.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1181452&GUID=F8BA9CEB-D3FF-4504-BD7A-70CC44E296D8
And to make it easiest, here is the Zoom link: https://valleywater.zoom.us/j/84454515597
Women often have good reason to be angry. But when we stand up to the men in charge, we face consequences. I will face mine tomorrow.
