Cupertino planning commissioner called out for alleged pattern of harassment

CUPERTINO — When she read a recent Mercury News article about Cupertino Planning Commission Chairman Ray Wang posting attacks on social media against housing advocates he described as “neo-liberal fascists,” Rosanne Foust cringed.

Wang was apparently urging city residents to send complaints about those activists to their employers to get them in trouble. Foust flashed back to 2003, when she sued Wang for harassment and stalking after he allegedly signed her business email up for pornographic content when she was a Redwood City planning commissioner.

So Foust said she decided to call out Wang for what she saw as a pattern of harassing behavior, by contacting media organizations including the Mercury News and San Jose Spotlight website, which published a story about the lawsuit last week.

“I had an eight-year-old and three-year-old [children], and I open my home computer and get these vulgar, nasty images,” Foust said in an interview. “Speaking up about him again isn’t high on my list of want-to-do’s, but I don’t think he should be serving as a chair of anything.”

Foust, who went on to become a Redwood City councilwoman and currently is executive director of the San Mateo County Economic Development Association, believes Wang — then a Redwood Shores resident — targeted her because they were on the opposite sides of a number of development issues in Redwood City.

Wang, an ardent slow-growth advocate, is now targeting opponents in the same fashion, she concluded.

Wang is aligned with residents opposed to redevelopment proposals for the Vallco Shopping Mall and who want to see slower growth in the city. He faced backlash in June when he posted his controversial comments on the neighborhood social media site Nextdoor.com about pro-housing activists, although Wang insists the part about reporting people to their employers was aimed at stopping the regular harassment he gets.

In an interview last week, Wang adamantly denied he ever signed Foust up for pornographic emails and said his home internet network was hacked. Wang said “developer interests” are behind Foust’s decision to bring up the old lawsuit and a related misdemeanor criminal charge.

“If you’re an active resident and you’re worried about the community’s health and environment, you’re going to be attacked,” Wang said. “I don’t do things like this. … They see me as an obstacle … and I’m being painted in the middle of a smear campaign.”

Back then, Foust and Wang lived in the same Redwood Shores neighborhood. She was also running for City Council when she began receiving the pornographic emails.

Because planning commissioners didn’t have separate emails, she was using her business email for city issues. “If someone did a [public records request] they’d find these yucky sites — he was trying to ruin my reputation,” Foust said.

Foust bristles at Wang’s suggestion that she spoke with media at the behest of developer Sand Hill Property Co., which plans to transform Vallco to a mixed-use office, residential and retail complex.

“Nobody puts me up to anything,” Foust said. “What bothered me was I saw him attacking somebody’s job, livelihood and reputation.”

At a Cupertino City Council meeting Tuesday, some residents said Wang’s Nextdoor post and Foust’s allegations point to a troubling pattern of behavior and called for Wang to resign from the planning commission or for council members to remove him.

“In these days and times, when parents and teachers are trying to prevent kids from bullying and cyberbullying others, Mr. Wang is a terrible example,” resident Eleanor Chan said.

Foust began receiving email solicitations for porn websites in June 2003 that included information such as her business email address, maiden name and mailing address, according to her court complaint, and on the weekend of July 4, one of those emails gave Foust’s computer a virus.

The emails prompted her to file a police report and she obtained an initial court injunction for harassment, which named a John or Mary Doe, because she did not know who was behind the emails, Foust said.

Subpoenaed records from the website’s internet service providers later showed at least three of the emails were sent from the IP address of Wang’s home computer, according to the complaint.

Wang ultimately pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of making an annoying telephone call. He pleaded not guilty to two felony charges for impersonation and unauthorized use of another person’s personal identification, which were subsequently dismissed because of a negotiated plea, according to court records.

For the misdemeanor charge, Wang was ordered to complete 50 hours of community service; the case was expunged later.

Wang said he never signed Foust up for those emails, and suggested his home internet was hacked.

“Back in the day, in the 2000s, you didn’t put password protection on your IP address,” Wang said. “A hacker came into an insecure network, and signed her up for pornographic emails.”

He said the misdemeanor charge originated from a phone message he left for Foust.

“When you discover something like that happens — I want to apologize and say, hey I want to have a conversation…and when lawyers get involved, you don’t get to have that conversation,” Wang said.

Foust said she didn’t remember any such voicemail or phone call.

Wang said he didn’t fight the criminal charge because he couldn’t afford to.

“At that point, I didn’t have the funds to do so. We were expecting a child, so I didn’t want to create a scene where I could potentially be fired — they were playing really dirty,” Wang said.

Wang said he did not remember how much he paid for Foust’s legal costs, though records provided by her then-attorney Ted Hannig suggest the amount was more than $17,000.

He contended the 2003 episode and renewed attention to it were orchestrated by “developer interests” and asserted he doesn’t plan to step down from the planning commission.

“You’re David versus Goliath in this situation,” he said. “I have no intention to be bullied by a developer.”

Wang was first appointed to the commission in January on yes votes by Mayor Steven Scharf, Vice Mayor Liang Chao and Councilman Darcy Paul.

Scharf, who has called Wang’s Nextdoor comments inappropriate, said he wasn’t familiar enough with Foust’s specific allegations against Wang.

“If someone had a felony conviction for something like this, they’d never get on the Planning Commission in the first place. We would not tolerate sexual harassment of any kind, now or in the future,” Scharf said. “But going back more than a decade, for things he ultimately was not charged with, that’s difficult to say.”

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Councilman Rod Sinks, who did not vote to appoint Wang, said the allegations reflect a trend.

“[Wang] was appointed along with two others who have basically published a lot of things on Nextdoor that I would consider questionable, uncivil…and full of personal attacks, and Ray is perhaps the best example,” Sinks said. “I’ve asked at City Hall whether there’s appetite to reconsider [his appointment] and apparently not.”

“I’m not here to adjudicate some past incident, but I would say there’s a pattern here from what he said publicly to what he’s done on Nextdoor,” Sinks added.

Contact Thy Vo at 408-200-1055 or tvo@bayareanewsgroup.com.

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