Gus Kramer, in the meantime, is
running for a county supervisor seat
Blog note: this article references a grand jury
accusation filed against the assessor in 2019.
If he’s elected to a seat on the Contra Costa
County Board of Supervisors in March, embattled County Assessor Gus Kramer
could celebrate two victories.
Winning the seat would result in charges against
him of “willful or corrupt” misconduct and creating a hostile work environment
being dropped, allowing Kramer to switch from one elected office to the other
without missing a single government paycheck .
Superior Court Judge John Cope made such an
outcome possible last Friday when he granted a request by Kramer’s attorney to
postpone a trial on those charges to June 15, a full year after the County
Civil Grand Jury filed the accusations.
Because the purpose of that trial is to remove
Kramer from the assessor’s job if he’s found guilty, the reason to hold it
would be moot if he voluntarily vacates the office to sit on the board. Kramer
is running for the District 5 supervisor seat against longtime incumbent
Federal Glover and fellow challenger Sean Trambley, a Martinez planning
commissioner.
If a candidate gets more than 50 percent of the
vote, he’ll win the seat outright; otherwise, the top two vote-getters will
face each other in November’s general election.
If a candidate gets more than 50 percent of the
vote, he’ll win the seat outright; otherwise, the top two vote-getters will
face each other in November’s general election.
Because the charges against Kramer aren’t being
prosecuted as crimes, “there are no other repercussions” for a guilty verdict
other than removal from the assessor’s office, Acting Assistant District
Attorney Chris Walpole acknowledged, noting the assessor isn’t facing any jail
time.
Walpole is prosecuting Kramer over the grand
jury’s accusation that he made “sexual” comments multiple times to female
employees in his department from December 2013 through 2018 and uttered an
ethnic slur to a worker.
The unusual “quasi-criminal, quasi-civil” nature
of the case — as Walpole called it in Friday’s court hearing — has complicated
matters. While the case is being prosecuted by the District Attorney’s Office
in much the same way as a criminal trial, the usual procedures are different
because they don’t involve jail time or any felony or misdemeanor convictions.
Kramer’s attorney, Michael Rains, said Friday he
intends to file a motion to dismiss the case and meanwhile needs more time to
depose witnesses.
Walpole objected to the postponement, saying
depositions “don’t make much sense” in this case. Depositions are commonly
taken before civil trials but seldom for criminal cases unless authorized by a
judge.
Kramer’s case has stretched across multiple
hearings since the accusations were first filed last June. Both the District
Attorney’s Office and Rains initially filed motions to remove Contra Costa
County prosecutors from the case and hand it over to the state Attorney
General’s office, but Superior Court Judge Theresa Canepa denied them.
Canepa subsequently bowed out of the case, citing
time constraints, and Charles “Ben” Burch temporarily took over, overseeing a
series of motions and scheduling the trial to begin on Jan. 27.
But he noted late last year the trial would go to
a different judge since he was taking a new assignment. When both sides met for
a status conference on Jan. 10 in front of Judge Cope, Walpole and Rains said
they were still awaiting some information subpoenaed from the Contra Costa
County Counsel’s Office.
After listening to Rains’ push for more time to
conduct the depositions, Cope said he could not start the trial himself until
after mid-April due to other obligations.
Contra Costa District 1 Supervisor John Gioia,
declined to weigh in on Kramer’s run for a board seat and how he may escape the
misconduct charges if triumphant but indicated the legal process has gone on
too long.
“I think the public interest is served by having
a trial occur as soon as possible, given how long this has dragged out,” Gioia
said.
County supervisors asked the civil grand jury to
investigate Kramer in 2018 after an investigator hired by the county determined
he “more likely than not” made comments in the workplace of a sexual nature,
which the affected employees found unwelcome and inappropriate. Kramer insists
he was “exonerated” of sexual harassment by that report. He has long insisted
he’s been targeted by disgruntled employees and the current Board of
Supervisors.
Rains gave an impassioned speech in court on
Friday, noting he does not want Kramer’s due process rights violated for the
sake of politics.
The case, Rains said, “was born and has its
genesis in tawdry Contra Costa politics.”
January 24, 2020
The Mercury News
By Annie Sciacca
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