OAKLAND — Ex-East Bay parks general manager Sabrina Landreth filed a scathing legal claim against her former employer this week, accusing her bosses of gender discrimination, nepotism and a pattern of illegal behavior that included wrongfully awarded contracts and secretly held board meetings.
Landreth — who resigned from the East Bay Regional Park District in early November — also accused multiple board members of retaliating against her, often for her work responding to harassment in the workplace. Taken together, the allegations paint a picture of an agency awash in hostility toward women, said Landreth’s attorney, Bobby Shukla.
“This culture came from the top, and was maintained from the top,” said Shukla, who is based in San Francisco. “It was something very hard for her to try and change, and to not succumb to requests that she considered unlawful or unethical. But she didn’t waver in her integrity.”
A statement from the East Bay Regional Park District said the agency “takes all claims of harassment and discrimination seriously.”
“Having a workplace free of harassment and discrimination is of paramount importance,” the statement read, adding that the district does not comment on pending litigation, as “that must get addressed through the legal system.”
Landreth arrived at the agency in 2020, after five years as Oakland’s city administrator. Her departure late last year came as a shock to many in the East Bay, particularly since she had just been awarded a five-year contract extension in 2024.
In her legal claim — which typically precedes the filing of a lawsuit — Landreth suggested that the repeated reprisals left her no way to remain employed at the parks district, which oversees 73 parks and more than 1,300 miles of trails across Alameda and Contra Costa counties.
Her experience at the district rapidly deteriorated over her final year on the job, according to her claim.
Beginning in December 2024, multiple female staff members reported that two directors, Colin Coffey of Hercules and Dennis Waespi of Castro Valley, had discriminated against them while treating male employees more favorably, according to the legal filing. In response, Landreth began instituting workplace training in March 2025 to combat harassment, micro-aggressions and bullying.
Signs of reprisals quickly followed from Coffey and Waespi, who allegedly “recruited” fellow board members — including John Mercurio, Olivia Sanwong and Lynda Deschambault — in their “retaliatory” campaign, the legal claim alleged. The quintet often ignored her emails, refused to communicate with her directly, made false allegations about her job performance and acted “with open hostility in public and closed sessions” toward her, according to the legal claim.
Landreth suggested she was punished for not going along with a host of illegal behavior by various board members.
One board member, who was not named, allegedly went outside of the required legal process for awarding “large lobbyist contracts” to a preferred consultant, the legal claim said. More unnamed board members also wrongfully promoted employees against district policy, violated the Brown Act by wrongfully holding closed sessions on land acquisitions and gave “priority placements” to family members for its on-call firefighter program.
In addition, board members gave gifts to other public officials — including helicopter ride-alongs — and steered public resources to support one board member’s re-election campaign, the legal claim alleged.
It all came amid a run of sexist behavior at the district, Landreth claimed, that left her earning less than her male predecessor while enduring numerous discriminatory comments by board members.
Waespi, in particular, allegedly praised “macho men” at the district while telling Landreth that “only women should be gardeners,” the legal filing said. Coffey, meanwhile, was heard accusing another board member, Elizabeth Echols, of being an ineffective board member, because “she’s a single mom,” according to the legal filing.
Both Coffey and Waespi also chided Landreth for not being “aggressive” enough, and for not “crushing” like her male predecessor, the claim said.
In a statement, Coffey said he was “disappointed” at being named in a legal claim by someone with whom he had a “cordial and professional relationship” during their time together at the district. Coffey stressed that “nothing in the government claim attributed to me is true,” adding that he was “appalled” at the notion he was ever the subject of a credible gender bias claim, nor was he aware of any such investigation.
“I believe what is happening is that Ms. Landreth, now an obviously disgruntled former employee, is now seeking to monetize what is otherwise an uncompensated voluntary resignation,” Coffey said. “To do so, she is grasping at the proverbial straws.”
In an email to this news outlet, Sanwong wrote that “I do dispute the characterization of my conduct,” but said she cannot comment further, due to the case being “an active legal matter.” Likewise, Mercurio also declined to comment.
Waespi and Deschambault could not be reached by this news outlet for comment Thursday afternoon.
Shukla said working conditions for Landreth — the first woman to ever work as the district’s general manager — simply became “intolerable.”
“While there was a desire to have a woman there as a leader, once it was happening or put into action, the culture that was brewing beneath came to the surface that was reluctant to have her lead,” Shukla said.
Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.