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Citing a pattern of disruptive and abusive behavior toward district staff, the Santa Clara Valley Water District board of directors on Thursday voted to strip one of its members, Rebecca Eisenberg, of all her committee assignments, to restrict her ability to talk to district staff and to require her to undergo anti-discrimination training and behavioral counseling.
In a tense meeting that followed more than a year of accusations, complaints and investigations, the board voted 6-1 to formally censure Eisenberg, a Palo Alto resident whose district in the western part of the county includes Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno and parts of San Jose. Eisenberg was the only dissenting vote.
The board then supplemented the censure vote by approving a set of disciplinary measures that had been proposed by board Chair Nai Hsueh and board member Tony Estemera. These include removing her from the six internal committees that she currently sits on, a list that includes the Policy and Planning Committee and the Environmental Creek Cleanup Committee. She will also lose her power to represent Valley Water on other regional bodies, including the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority, an agency charged with improving flood control in Palo Alto, East Palo Alto and Menlo Park.
In censuring Eisenberg, the board pointed to two factors. One is her history of harassment and discrimination against district employees, as documented in a recent independent review by the firm Meyers Nave. The other was Eisenberg’s decision on Jan. 29 to take the roughly 2,000-page confidential report that detailed the accusations against her out of the secure room in the agency’s San Jose headquarters and drive away with the documents.
Board members had been instructed by the clerk that they could read the report, which included testimony from confidential sources, in the room only.
According to the Meyers Nave report, the list of complainants against Eisenberg included CEO Rick Callender, General Counsel Carlos Orellana and other district employees. They had alleged that Eisenberg engaged in discrimination and harassment based on sex, race, age and national origin, retaliation, abusive conduct and improper direction to staff.
The firm reviewed 25 allegations and concluded that eight of them violated various board policies while the other 17 were not substantiated. Eisenberg’s statements that men “love to build things and use concrete” and that flooding exists because of all the concrete poured by “men engineers” were deemed to be discriminatory harassment, the report said. Her request that the district’s assistant CEO help prove that Callender is “corrupt” in exchange for the millions Eisenberg reportedly said she would get that employee under a whistleblower law was found to be “improper direction.”
Eisenberg also reportedly described herself as the only “non-Boomer on the board” and engaged in abusive conduct against Orellana during a December 2022 closed session as well as during a phone call the following day, when she reportedly accused him of “mansplaining” to her, questioned his qualifications and asserted that she knows more than he does. She also allegedly created a hostile work environment and engaged in abusive conduct toward Callender, the review found. And the review found that Eisenberg violated a board policy on national origin-based discrimination when she reportedly told Hsueh during a June 30, 2023, meeting, “English isn’t your first language so I want to make sure you understand.”
Eisenberg assured her colleagues before the March 14 censure vote that she has learned from her mistakes and would prefer reconciliation to conflict. She also apologized to Hsueh and said she had not meant to offend anyone. She said she welcomes additional training and attributed her mistakes to her transition from the private sector to a public board.
“I’m choosing not to continue this battle. I’m choosing not to fight with you,” Eisenberg said. “I think there’s been too much distraction.”
Board member John Varela, who as last year’s chair was in charge of appointing committee members, also apologized — for appointing Eisenberg to the various committees where she reportedly made people feel disrespected.
“I apologize to all our staff members, to all the managers, that endured this wrath for an entire year,” John Varela said.
Valera’s colleagues all agreed that Eisenberg’s actions — as described the report — were grounds for a censure. They stopped short, however, of stripping her of receiving stipends for auditing committee meetings or getting compensated for travel expenses to conferences on behalf of the district. These punitive measures, which Hsueh and Estemera had proposed, were removed upon request from board member Jim Beall, who argued that censure should not be tied to salary and expenses and that board members could get valuable training and other benefit from traveling to various events.
The personnel dispute had regional undertones, with some north county residents and former public officials suggesting that the district isn’t just punishing Eisenberg but also her constituents in District 7.
Former Mountain View Mayor Mike Kasperzak and former Palo Alto Mayor Liz Kniss both made that case. Kasperzak suggested levying monetary fines or keeping her from attending some events would be suitable punishment.
“But removing the director from committees, removing the director from opportunities to travel to learn more about how to do the job more effectively, really diminishes the rights of the people who elected Director Eisenberg to the district and really does a disservice to them,” Kasperzak said. “There are 300,000 people whom this director represents and you will be affecting their rights as customers and citizens of this organization.”
Kniss said taking actions against Eisenberg would “reverberate throughout our community” and reminded the board that people in north county are active voters on district initiatives.
“It will have a very long-term effect and it will probably affect … how my district votes on water,” Kniss said.
Others, however, strongly pushed back against the idea that Eisenberg should avoid punishment for her actions just because she is from Palo Alto. Constance Morris was among the speakers who said they were deeply offended by the abusive behavior that Eisenberg had engaged in, as evidenced in the report.
“You’re disrespectful to too many people and you need to be removed,” Morris told Eisenberg during the hearing. “I’d fire you right now if you worked for me.”
The board voted 5-2 to adopt the list of additional disciplinary measures. Board member Barbara Keegan supported the censure but opposed taking Eisenberg off all of the committees. Eisenberg also dissented.
“That’s not a punishment for her, that’s a punishment for her constituents and I just don’t feel that‘s a fair thing to do,” Keegan said.
So disappointed in this representative’s behavior. Her claim that people misinterpreted her strong opinions just just exemplifies that she doesn’t understand how to operate in this environment. The voters will fix this at our next opportunity.
She “attributed her mistakes to her transition from the private sector to a public board.” Don’t let her fool you. That behavior isn’t acceptable in the private sector, either.