Ex-Oakland mayoral staffer prepares to file lawsuit alleging wrongful termination

OAKLAND Two former staffers in the Oakland mayor s office claim they were wrongfully terminated in the spring days before Barbara Lee was elected to the city s top office The leaders were among the remaining staffers held over from ex-Mayor Sheng Thao s administration nearly all of whom were fired in sweeping fashion by the interim mayor at the time City Councilmember Kevin Jenkins In separate legal filings former chief of staff Leigh Hanson and junior staffer Brandon Harami take aim at Jenkins conduct ahead of their terminations lodging assertions that the council member refutes Related Articles Three unanswered questions about Oakland s federal corruption occurrence ICE Demarcation Patrol operations in East Bay are officially canceled agents say High-ranking Oakland official who spoke to feds about ex-mayor leaves for another East Bay city East Bay man suspected of making racist death threats to Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee How will the search for yet another police chief tip the balance of power in Oakland Neither of their declares has been reviewed by the Oakland City Council which could choose to either deny them likely paving the way for lawsuits or seek specific kind of resolution Harami for his part reported he is preparing to file a lawsuit against the city in the coming weeks The legal declares represent the latest loose ends from the Thao era a particularly toxic chapter of Oakland s politics in which city administrators routinely accused each other of corruption and retaliation Hanson and Harami were both close allies of Thao who voters removed in the November electoral process Thao was subsequently charged by federal prosecutors in January with conspiracy and bribery a matter that remains ongoing The two received crucial attention Hanson as a community face of the mayor s office and Harami as a vocal often combative social media presence in the run-up to Thao s supremacy in the mayoral referendum Neither legal filing mentions a high-profile disgrace that emerged after thousands of Thao administration records were made constituents in the spring leading Jenkins to hastily remove nearly all of the ex-mayor s remaining staffers Interim Mayor Kevin Jenkins and former Mayor Sheng Thao s Chief of Staff Leigh Hanson wait while former Rep Barbara Lee files paperwork to run for mayor at City Hall in Oakland Calif on Wednesday Jan Lee communicated Wednesday she will run to be the next mayor of Oakland and a special vote will be held on April Jane Tyska Bay Area News Group In a private note issued among those documents Hanson appeared to allude to Black people as tokens a description that sparked widespread populace backlash including from Oakland s chapter of the NAACP though Hanson insisted the intended meaning of her words had been taken out of context Hanson s legal filing however alleges her firing was genuinely the upshot of concerns she raised about Jenkins close relationship with representatives of a billboard company Becker Boards LLC which signed a contract with the city earlier this year She maintains Jenkins in January had explored setting up a high-ranking Becker official Nema Link and a lobbyist hired by the company Isaac Kos-Reid with their own office space in the mayor s suite at City Hall Days later she alleges Jenkins accepted gifts of wine and premium olive oil from Link which did not appear in a general disclosure he filed in April about likely conflicts of interest Link on the other hand explained this news organization the gift was only an inexpensive bottle of olive oil intended for Hanson and not Jenkins He and Kos-Reid flatly denied the notion they were ever offered office space at City Hall It s an absurd and baseless claim Kos-Reid explained in a message adding it was sad but perhaps not surprising coming from a disgruntled and disgraced ex-chief of staff of an indicted mayor The Oakland City Council voted - in June to allow Becker to build five new billboards around town a deal that was expected to bring the city million in upfront revenue and annual payments for the next three decades Jenkins was not present for the vote Hanson also accuses Jenkins of violating the city s budget freeze by securing general money to cover his trips this year to Long Beach and Washington D C against his chief of staff s objections Jenkins who is now the council s president denied Hanson and Harami s claims leveled toward him He inherited both staffers from Thao and neither would likely have stayed with the city following the April special mayoral electoral process In a report Jenkins called the maintains farcical and absolutely without merit saying the former staffers were advancing baseless statements in pursuit of payout and relying on falsehoods and mischaracterizations rather than facts It is disappointing to see former employees attempt to weaponize fabricated narratives in an effort to squeeze funds from a city already working to recover from essential budget constraints he disclosed Black leadership will not be used as a token or scapegoat to extract money from the people of Oakland Hanson referred questions from this news organization to her attorneys who did not directly respond OAKLAND CA - MAY Seneca Scott speaks during a Town Sweep press conference held by the Neighbors Together Oakland population group in the Bottoms Up Population Gardens on Tuesday May in Oakland Calif The group wants the city to follow its encampment management agenda and do something about the homeless camps Aric Crabb Bay Area News Group A character that overlaps in both Hanson s and Harami s legal insists is Seneca Scott a former mayoral candidate who takes vitriolic aim at city leaders on social media where he posts about Oakland s ills for a mostly conservative audience Hanson declared she was fired a day after she requested therapeutic leave due to stress from one of Scott s provocations a threat he posted on X to come to the official s home according to her legal claim The Oakland Mayor s Office left Ms Hanson feeling unsupported in the face of vitriolic harassment and as she continued to raise concerns about unethical and illegal actions her filing states Scott s online crusades are central to Harami s claim The activist has posted a barrage of homophobic insults targeting Harami who is openly gay including an unsupported accusation that the former mayoral staffer was a pedophile The city reached a court settlement with Scott in February after seeking a restraining order on Harami s behalf while a judge denied a similar request by Harami over the summer the Oaklandside published Harami explained the city failed to protect him from harassment accusing Jenkins of wanting to negotiate a peace treaty between the two sides after meeting with Scott s legal representation in late January Mr Harami was shocked that the Mayor after seeing the blatant threats and harassment by Scott would somehow suggest both parties were at fault and peace needed to be reached the legal filing states Jenkins narrated this news organization he never organized any such peace treaty He shared a scathing profanity-laden text message that Scott sent him in warning the council member to never speak to me again Scott a key figure in the political movement to recall Thao declined to be interviewed He has pulled papers to run in the mayoral poll Jenkins meanwhile would be up for re-election to a second council term to represent East Oakland next November The council president s political status rose during his stint as interim mayor though earlier this year he refuted rumors about a run for state Assemblymember Mia Bonta s seat in Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland Call or text him at - - or email him at shomik bayareanewsgroup com