This Contra Costa candidate shouldn't hold a public office

Blog note: This article refers to a Contra Costa Grand Jury accusation in which the accused is trying to subvert the grand jury action that would forever bar him from holding public office again.

It's essential that voters along the northern Contra Costa waterfront from Pinole to Antioch pay close attention when they mark their ballots in the Nov. 3 race for county supervisor. Federal Glover deserves reelection in the District 5 run off.

His opponent, county Assessor Gus Kramer, doesn't deserve to hold any public office - not his current one nor the one he's seeking. It's that simple.

In March, Glover garnered 49.87% of the vote in the three-way race, falling just shy of the majority he needed to avoid a runoff. The rest of the ballots were nearly evenly split between two challengers with Kramer eking out the second spot for November.

First elected in 2000, Glover has been a solid, softspoken vote for balancing fiscal restraint with meeting the county's social service and public safety needs. And he has been a strong advocate for maintaining the county's growth boundaries.

But the choice between the two runoff candidates is not just about ensuring that Glover, a solid public official, holds his office. It's also about making sure that, for the sake of integrity of county government, Kramer doesn't win.

As Kramer seeks a seat on the Board of Supervisors, he faces a #MeToo trial for removal from his current county post. It's been 15 months since the Contra Costa grand jury signed a formal accusation that Kramer engaged in willful or corrupt misconduct in office by creating a hostile work environment for employees under his supervision.

The accusation alleges that Kramer, in incidents dating back to 2014, told stories about his conquests with women, made unwanted advances on a subordinate, talked about giving a sex toy to his niece, made crude comments about his sexual desires, and disparaged people of Mexican descent.

The case should have been resolved by now. Instead, because of repeated delays enabled by Contra Costa judges, the trial is scheduled to start just before the election and probably won't be completed before most ballots are counted.

But the accusation is just the start of a long list of Kramer misbehavior that should have alarmed voters years ago.

While serving as Martinez city clerk from 1986 to 1996, Kramer won his first term as county assessor in 1994 by beating a dead man. His opponent, Daniel Hallissy, died of a heart attack before the election, but his name remained on the ballot.

Since then:

• The state Fair Political Practices Commission fined Kramer $4,000 because he failed to disclose ownership of rental properties in Martinez when he was city clerk.
• The FPPC fined Kramer $5,500 after finding he didn't file nine reports disclosing late campaign contributions and did not properly disclose a loan on a semiannual campaign statement as required by law.
• Kramer demolished an asbestos-laden house he owned in Bay Point without notifying air board officials, resulting in a $5,000 fine.
• He retaliated against one of his employees, resulting in a jury verdict and subsequent settlement of legal fees that cost county taxpayers a combined $994,000.
• One of Kramer's properties was underassessed by his own office, allowing him to avoid paying more than $21,000 in property taxes. After a reporter discovered it, Kramer called the woman who sold him the house. She said he wanted her to help him create a paper trail justifying the valuation.
• He used an arcane real estate transaction known as a gift deed that allowed him to avoid paying transfer taxes when acquiring millions of dollars of property in the county. Ethics laws limit gifts to public officials to a few hundred dollars a year.
• After news stories about those transactions, he amended years of state ethics forms because he had failed to disclose ownership of millions of dollars of property in the county and loans of hundreds of thousands of dollars to friends and associates.
• Kramer's office overvalued vacant dirt lots of a Pittsburg developer with whom the assessor had been publicly feuding, costing the company well over $200,000 in additional taxes that year.
• Kramer's office reassessed his son and daughterin-law's home, claiming incorrectly that they had converted their garage to living space. The reassessment came after Kramer had a falling out with them and they no longer permitted him to see his grandchildren. After the daughter-in-law complained, an appraiser inspected the house and the reassessment was rescinded.
• He filed a tort claim against the Contra Costa County Employees' Retirement Association alleging that he should have been able to double-dip, to draw his county pension and his county salary at the same time. He never pursued the case.
• He filed a civil rights lawsuit claiming county supervisors discriminated against him by not granting him pay raises other department heads had received. A federal judge threw out the case, concluding in essence that the board can use discretion when it awards raises.
• The Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors censured Kramer after an independent investigator found he likely made inappropriate sexual comments to two women who worked in his department.

How has Kramer, dubbed "The Bad Boy Assessor" in his own office, gotten away with such behavior all these years? Former Contra Costa County District Attorney Mark Peterson, later found guilty of felony perjury, killed an investigation into Kramer's private land deals over the objections of two deputies supervising the probe, those deputies said.

County supervisors at first buried findings about Kramer's inappropriate sexual comments to his subordinates. And Contra Costa judges have been indifferent to the importance of quickly conducting a trial on the grand jury accusation.

Kramer doesn't deserve his current job. And he certainly doesn't deserve election to another key post. To preserve the integrity of county government, voters should reelect Federal Glover.

East Bay Times
August 5, 2020