Former Vallejo employee settles whistleblower retaliation lawsuit for $1 million

VALLEJO – A former high ranking city of Vallejo employee who alleged that she was fired for reporting wrongdoing by former City Manager Greg Nyhoff settled a retaliation lawsuit against the city for $1 million, her attorneys said Tuesday. 

Former assistant to the city manager for communications and special projects Joanna Altman was fired in April 2020 along with special advisor Slater Matzke and assistant to the city manager for economic development Will Morat. The three filed a lawsuit alleging wrongful termination, harassment, retaliation and defamation in 2021. 

Only Altman settled. Morat and Matzke’s claims are scheduled to go to trial later this year.

“This $1 Million settlement is bittersweet,” Altman said in a statement released by her attorneys.  “Personally, I feel vindicated as a whistleblower who did my duty to report wrongdoing. However, many of the actors that enabled this conduct to work against the interests of the community are still in City Hall.”

Altman was originally hired by the city in 2012 as an administrative analyst and was promoted to assistant to the city manager in 2016. Nyhoff was hired as Vallejo City Manager in 2018 after a national search. He resigned as city manager in 2021.

The lawsuit alleged that Nyhoff created a culture of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation in Vallejo that was so deeply embedded that other employees felt free to do the same. The three fired employees alleged that they witnessed such incidents but the city rarely, if ever, investigated them.

The lawsuit also alleged that Nyhoff himself had “blatantly engaged in graft and corruption” and fired any employee who “threatened his corrupt activities.” 

It accuses Nyhoff of undermining the city’s position in a controversial land deal to develop 157 acres of North Mare Island. Morat and Matzke were a part of the negotiating team for the project, but claimed that Nyhoff met with potential developers and then unilaterally weakened the term sheet by removing benchmarks, public infrastructure requirements, and eliminating conditions of sale that would have ensured development.

In the lawsuit, Morat claimed that Nyhoff ordered him to change the language in the term sheet and said if he didn’t, he’d be fired.

The City Council approved the revised term sheet and later sold the land to the developers with the Nimitz Group and the Southern Land Company for $3 million in 2022. The Nimitz Group and Southern Land Company have since created a new company, the Mare Island Company, to manage the development. 

The lawsuit outlines several other instances where Nyhoff allegedly acted against the city’s interests in backroom negotiations. But it alleges that Nyhoff “expected all employees to fall in line, obeying his every command, regardless of the command’s correctness, ethics, or impact.”

It alleges that Altman, Morat and Matzke all attempted to intervene on behalf of a city employee who was being harassed by the then-head of the city’s housing division, Judy Shepard-Hall. But Nyhoff instead scrutinized the three of them and Morat was placed on leave. 

Meanwhile, Nyhoff’s performance evaluations with the City Council had not gone well, and Nyhoff blamed his staff, according to the lawsuit.

By March 2020, the City Council had ordered an investigation of Nyhoff. Each of the three employees were interviewed by the outside investigators, and, according to the lawsuit, alleged that Nyhoff had not worked in the best interests of the city by favoring certain developers and threatened and bullied subordinates. 

The City Council concluded the investigation on April 22, 2020, according to the lawsuit. The next day, Altman, Morat and Matzke were all fired. The lawsuit also alleges that former Vallejo human resources director Heather Ruiz falsely told city staff that they had been fired for “doing something illegal” and “embezzlement.”

Christopher Boucher, the outside counsel who conducted the investigation, later told ABC7 News that based on facts he learned throughout the investigation process he advised Nyhoff to fire Morat, Altman and Matzke. "There was bona fide independent reasons for their terminations that were unrelated," he said.

But Altman’s attorney, Randall E. Strauss of Oakland law firm Gwilliam Ivary Chiosso Cavalli & Brewer, said that the city “has now paid an extremely steep price for attacking the messenger instead of solving the problem.”

“This is a clear-cut case of whistleblower retaliation,” Strauss  said.  “Rather than do the right thing and look into serious allegations of wrongdoing, the City chose to sweep the matter under the rug and fire loyal employees who tried to alert the City Council of what was going on.”