Valley Water wants sheriff to seize document from board member

BY DAVE PRICE
Daily Post Editor

The water agency in Santa Clara County wants the sheriff to seize a document one of the water district’s directors took from the agency’s offices.

That’s one of the demands that Valley Water makes in a lawsuit against Rebecca Eisenberg, a Palo Alto attorney who was elected to the agency’s seven-member board of directors in November 2022.

The 2,000-page document the agency wants returned is a report by lawyers who looked into Eisenberg’s behavior and a separate report about her complaints she lodged against the agency’s management. She’s accused of behaving in an “abrasive, unprofessional and harassing manner,” by making racial remarks and belittling others.

It’s alleged that she was allowed to read the reports in an office at the water agency, and while employees were busy with other tasks, she grabbed the reports, put them in her car and drove away.

The water agency decided that board members could read the document, but that they weren’t entitled to a copy of it. They deemed the report to be “confidential.”

Eisenberg went to Valley Water’s offices at 5750 Almaden Expressway in San Jose on Jan. 29 to read the document. She was given a place in a room to read the document. The suit claims that while nobody was looking, she grabbed the 2,000-page document and drove away.

Valley Water reported Eisenberg to police, but she hasn’t been charged. This civil suit was filed in Superior Court on April 22.

Valley Water claims that removal of the report “has put in jeopardy Valley Water’s policies and procedures” for investigating allegations. It claims that confidential witnesses might be exposed by the release of the document.

If Valley Water prevails in the case, it said that it would seek an order “directing the Santa Clara County Office Sheriff (sic) to remove the confidential reports from Eisenberg’s possession.”

The request to have the sheriff seize the document is a new wrinkle in then controversy that exploded in February when Valley Water CEO Rick Callender published a memo that includes a map of Eisenberg’s alleged heist, a by-minute timeline, interviews with employees in the building and two photos of Eisenberg carrying the 2,000-page report out the door and to her car.
At that time, Eisenberg said Callender is attacking her because he has problems managing his employees.

“If staff are so afraid of me, why do they still come to me — to this day — to have me help protect them from the CEO?” she said. “A narcissist only sees as far as the mirror.”

She also said Valley Water is corrupt.

Eisenberg said the investigation and Callender’s memo are a distraction from Valley Water lying on a $2.8 billion loan application to expand a reservoir east of Gilroy — a project that Eisenberg opposes because of its cost and environmental impact.

“This is all a distraction from the main point,” she said. “The main point is this district has engaged in significant, significant corruption and malfeasance.”