Ex-Oakland city employee awarded $613,300 in unfair-firing case

A federal jury awarded a former Oakland city employee $613,302 on Wednesday, finding that former Oakland City Administrator Deanna Santana retaliated against her and unfairly fired her.

Daryelle LaWanna Preston was Oakland’s employee relations director until she was terminated by Santana in October 2013, after repeatedly butting heads with the former city administrator over alleged misconduct in City Hall.

At the crux of the case was a dispute in February 2012, when Preston refused to sign documents that would have bolstered the city’s case against Councilwoman Desley Brooks, who allegedly violated city hiring rules and improperly signed off on receipts for music equipment at the Rainbow Teen Center in East Oakland.

Preston claimed she had been asked to “falsify” official reports about the teen center as part of the effort to target Brooks. The allegations became a flash point at a July 2013 council meeting, in which the other council members considered censuring Brooks.

Instead, the council voted to censure itself.

Preston claimed her firing was also punishment for reporting violations of state and local law to her supervisors. In June 2013, she told Santana that Oakland Fire Chief Teresa Reed had agreed to extend a term of the firefighters’ union contract without council approval. Shortly before her termination, Preston accused city officials of mishandling claims that part-time city employees were not paying union dues.

About 10 weeks after she was fired, Preston went to work for the city and county of San Francisco. Within a year, she was promoted to “essentially the same job she had in Oakland,” according to her attorney, Dan Siegel.

“It’s frustrating to me that it went to trial,” Siegel said, noting that most lawsuits against municipalities end in settlements.

“I just think there was tremendous hostility and almost an attitude of having a grudge toward Ms. Preston,” Siegel said. “Not only did we not settle this case, there were no settlement conversations, period. None.”

Siegel believes that the city wound up spending more than $1.5 million to fight the case, when it could have settled for $150,000.

Santana, now Sunnyvale’s city manager, did not return calls seeking comment.

A spokesman from the Oakland city attorney’s office said City Attorney Barbara Parker respects the jury process, but disagrees with the verdict.

The “plaintiff was an ‘at will’ department head in the city of Oakland,” Parker said in a statement. “That means the city administrator could terminate her for any reason or no reason at all and without notice. (The) plaintiff had the burden of proving that the city terminated her for unlawful reasons. We believe the evidence was clear that the city was fully within its rights to terminate plaintiff.”

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: rswan@sfchronicle.com