The so-called “bad boy assessor’ has a long history of controversy
MARTINEZ — The Contra Costa County Grand Jury on Wednesday called for County Assessor Gus Kramer’s removal from office, accusing him of “willful or corrupt” misconduct and creating a hostile work environment.
The accusation, filed in court by the District Attorney’s Office, says Kramer made “sexual” comments multiple times to female employees in his department and once made an ethnic slur to a worker.
The alleged violations of state law occurred from December 2013 through 2018, according to the grand jury.
Kramer said Wednesday the accusations are part of some employees’ “agenda” against him.
“I welcome the opportunity to confront my accusers in court,” he said in a phone call Wednesday. “I have never been afforded due process. It’s all been like a Spanish inquisition.”
In 2014, according to the grand jury, Kramer visited an employee’s cubicle to tell her stories about his “conquests with women.” In the same year, he called the employee out of a meeting, pointed to a rose on a table and said, “I brought that for you,” then added he was “smitten” by her.
In a text message exchange with the employee, who asked him why he canceled an office picnic, Kramer said, “Because I wanted you all to myself.” He later told her in text messages that his vacation would be better if he had her at the lake with him, according to the report.
He also told her about giving his niece a vibrator as a Christmas present, a niece he said she reminded him of, according to the grand jury accusation.
The document calls the harassing conduct “pervasive” and notes the employee considered the work environment hostile or abusive enough that she “feared for her job, was on stress medication and sought professional counseling.”
Another employee told investigators that in 2015, while in an elevator with Kramer, he said he had been having “inappropriate” thoughts about her, according to the grand jury.
Two other employees also alleged he made sexual comments to them, according to the grand jury. One said Kramer told her she looked “really hot” in a photo of her wearing a wedding dress.
In 2018, Kramer told another employee a “graphic” story about a couple having anal sex on multiple occasions, as well as talking to him about the “physical attributes” of various women he met at business meetings, according to the grand jury.
Kramer allegedly called that employee an ethnic slur and told him “white males would never vote for a (expletive) Mexican.”
Kramer insisted Wednesday the investigation is politically motivated. The employees who made the allegations — their names were omitted from the grand jury report — had complained previously when not promoted by a committee that handles promotions, Kramer said.
Kramer said he was not involved with that promotion process or committee, though he could override its decisions. When asked whether the employees were lying, he said, “yes.”
“They claim to be the victims,” Kramer said. “I’m the victim here.”
Last year, county supervisors asked the grand Jury to investigate Kramer after an investigator hired by the county determined he “more likely than not” made comments in the workplace of a sexual nature that the involved employees found unwelcome and inappropriate. Kramer insists he was “exonerated” of sexual harassment by that report.
Kramer, 68, a former Martinez city clerk, was first elected to the non-partisan assessor’s position in 1994.
His tenure has been dogged by controversy involving questionable assessments, real estate deals and his use of gift deeds to acquire property in the county. In 2010, Kramer made 33 amendments to his state-required financial disclosure statements after this news organization reported he’d failed to report loans, business interests and property ownership in the county between 2002 and 2009.
Kramer contended then that the reporting was retribution for an assessment increase on property this news organization owned in Walnut Creek at the time. The organization’s editor then dismissed the claim as patently false.
Kramer’s attorney, Michael Rains, said in a court hearing Wednesday he plans to file a demurrer — a form of objection — to the civil grand jury’s accusation. Kramer’s first court appearance has been set for June 19.
This news organization last year also reported that former District Attorney Mark Peterson — himself the subject of a grand jury accusation in 2017 — killed an investigation into Kramer’s real estate dealings in 2011 over the objections of his staff. Two lawyers said they were in the midst of probing Kramer’s holdings when Peterson ordered them to stop.
Just this week, the state Fair Political Practices Commission fined Kramer $5,500 for campaign finance violations.
Kramer has been accused of sexual harassment or of making sexually inappropriate comments by women in the assessor’s office before. A woman accused him of sexually harassing and retaliating against her in 2000. The sexual harassment case was not sustained, but the retaliation was, and in 2009 the county reached a nearly $1 million settlement with the woman.
Last year, when a county investigation found “it was more likely than not” Kramer made “inappropriate” comments to two employees, the Board of Supervisors voted 4-0 to censure Kramer. He then sued the county, claiming it failed to turn over documents about the censure vote and violated open meeting laws by discussing the matter in closed session. The suit remains open.
The district attorney’s office was bound to accept and file the grand jury’s accusation against Kramer, according to prosecutor Chris Walpole, who filed it. Court documents show the office tried to serve Kramer multiple times with the accusation beginning in early May, but could not locate him at his home or office to serve him in person and ultimately left it with staff in his office.
The process of removing municipal and county elected officials from office through a grand jury accusation alleging “corrupt or willful misconduct” is rarely used, although permitted by a 1943 state law. Peterson faced possible removal from office in 2017 for illegally spending $66,000 in campaign funds on personal expenses. Before he could answer the accusation, he was charged by the state Department of Justice with perjury and embezzlement, accepted a probation sentence in a plea deal, and resigned.
Once a civil grand jury files an accusation against an elected official, the local district attorney can files charges in Superior Court, where a trial is held and a jury decides whether the official should be stripped from office, said William Larsen, a retired San Mateo and Santa Clara prosecutor who removed two public officials from office through the accusation process.
“It’s a hybrid criminal-civil” case, Larsen said. In all respects it is analogous to a criminal proceeding, except the penalty is removal from office, he said, adding that a unanimous jury verdict is needed to remove the official, who can then appeal.
Larsen said he removed a San Mateo Unified School Board member in the 1970s and then-Mountain View mayor Mario Ambra in 2002 through this process. The school board member had asked a relative to be a straw buyer of surplus vehicles from the district, and Ambra tried to influence city employees to block a development on land adjacent to property he owned.
June 5, 2019
The Mercury News
By Annie Sciacca
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