MARTINEZ — Contra Costa County taxpayers may soon be on the hook for a settlement of a lawsuit accusing Assessor Gus Kramer of improperly slashing a property’s value by millions of dollars — then retaliating against the employee who raised alarms about it.
The potential payout under consideration by the county’s Board of Supervisors would cap another legal battle for the elected assessor, whose three-decade-long career has included campaign finance violation fines, a court judgement in another workplace retaliation lawsuit and allegations of “willful or corrupt” misconduct that ended in a mistrial.
The lawsuit filed against Contra Costa County has resurfaced concerns about manipulated property values during Kramer’s tenure, dating back to 2009, when he avoided paying $21,000 after his own property was underassessed, according to court records and media reports. That same year, Kramer’s office overvalued the vacant dirt lots of a developer with whom he had been publicly feuding, costing the company more than $200,000, according to previous reporting by this news organization.
Andrea Albrecht, a former supervising appraiser in the Contra Costa Assessor’s Office, offered no theories for why Kramer inserted himself in the property valuation at the center of her claims. She left the agency within months of speaking up about the incident, said Christian Schreiber, an attorney representing Albrecht.
“She was troubled by how things unfolded and how things operate in the assessor’s office,” Schreiber said. “Her experience at the assessor’s office — and the way it ended — had a very significant impact on her career and her life.”
In an interview this week, Kramer said that retaliating against employees is “not the way I do business.”
“I did an appraisal on the back of a napkin,” Kramer told this newspaper. “That infuriated her and her ego. And I’d been telling her for some time that she was being too aggressive with her appraisals.”
Albrecht’s employment retaliation, discrimination and workplace harassment lawsuit centers on claims that Kramer tried to shave at least $3 million off the value of the Carmel Pines apartments, a senior living community nestled between the Iron Horse Trail and Civic Park near downtown Walnut Creek.
Albrecht claimed Kramer “usurped” a mid-December 2022 hearing before the county’s Assessment Appeals Board by showing up unexpectedly and — despite having done no previous work on the case — arguing against Albrecht’s valuation of the property, according to the lawsuit.
Ahead of the public hearing, Albrecht recommended the property be valued between $13 million and $15 million. She based those figures on “several” visits to the Carmel Drive property and multiple valuation models, the lawsuit claimed.
But Kramer “appeared without warning” at the hearing and barred Albrecht and her team from presenting their appraisal, the lawsuit said. He then met with the property owners during a break at the hearing, during which he agreed to lower the valuation to $10 million, according to the lawsuit.
Once the hearing resumed, Kramer notified the board that he had reached “a meeting of the minds” with the property owner, according to a recording of the meeting, which this news organization obtained. Meanwhile, a representative for the property owner — which had sought a $9 million valuation — told the appeals board that “it’s always helpful when two sides can find a mutually, modestly unacceptable but reasonable solution.”
Sounding surprised, an appeals board member quipped: “We should take more recesses, clearly,” according to the audio recording.
Dubbed the “Bad Boy Assessor,” Kramer was first elected county assessor in 1994 and has held onto the job for more than three decades. After his election victory in 2022, Kramer said it would be his last term, but in an interview Tuesday said he hasn’t ruled out running for the seat again this year. “I haven’t decided yet,” he said.
In an interview with this newspaper, Kramer said he had never before met the property owners or their representative, and he “just happened to be in the room” that day. He also claimed to have told Albrecht the night before that “her numbers did not add up.”
Kramer said his decision to overrule Albrecht was validated in mid-2025, when the property sold for $10.3 million.
The lawsuit, however, claimed Kramer’s lower valuation “was not based on any evidence, research or methodologies accepted in the field of property appraisal,” leading Albrecht to conclude that “Kramer’s actions during the hearing were unlawful.”
Albrecht, a decade-long appraiser at the agency, later raised alarms about Kramer’s actions in an email to the clerk and the attorney for the appeals board, claiming the assessor “obstructed my staff,” “overruled” her opinion and was “acting on his own accord,” according to the lawsuit. Albrecht also said that “I cannot, in good faith, prepare a stipulation supporting a valuation” of $10 million, adding that “this practice is not within the guidelines of the Revenue and Taxation Code.”
Kramer accused Albrecht of an “egregious” breach of “confidential valuation and case strategy information,” in a letter to her direct supervisor, the lawsuit claimed. He barred her from ever representing the assessor’s office again at appeals board hearings, and ordered her to “follow the chain of command,” it added.
“Reasonable minds can differ on how to proceed in a case, but ultimately the decision on whether to settle a case rests with the Assessor,” Kramer wrote in the counseling memorandum, which was addressed to Albrecht’s supervisor and included in the lawsuit.
A few months prior to this incident, in October 2022, Albrecht had filed a human resources complaint alleging discrimination and harassment based on her race and gender by two other county officials in the assessor’s office, according to the lawsuit. The complaint was dismissed in May 2023 as being unsustained.
In January 2023, after the hearing and Kramer’s admonition, Albrecht filed a human resources complaint alleging retaliation by Kramer, and in February of that year she went on medical leave for several months due to stress from the ordeal, according to the lawsuit. Her request to transfer to a different department upon her return was denied, and county officials later denied her retaliation complaint.
Attempts by this news outlet to reach the past and present owners of the property were not successful.
On Dec. 18, Albrecht’s attorney filed court papers declaring the two sides had reached a settlement in principle, and that it would likely be finalized within 90 days. Any settlement would likely be paid by county taxpayers.
Schreiber said Albrecht is “ready to move on.”
“She’s happy to put this behind her,” the attorney 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.
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