The allegations are contained in a lengthy complaint filed last Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court by Kristina Zahn, who worked as a paralegal at Fox’s law firm and later as a scheduler in his taxpayer-funded district office.

The lawsuit also claims the Palmdale legislator committed “serial violations of California wage and hour laws,” failed to pay his employees minimum wage, and required employees at his law firm to “perform between 15 and 25 hours per week of free labor on behalf of his campaigns.”

‘Propelled into elected office thanks to unpaid work’

“Rather than hire campaign workers or solicit volunteers from the community, Fox was propelled into elected office thanks to the unpaid work performed by Ms. Zahn and other law office employees,” the lawsuit alleges.

Fox denies the allegations and says he looks forward to clearing his name in court.

“They’re meritless claims by a disgruntled ex-employee,” Fox, a first-term Democrat, said in a Thursday interview. “Nothing will ever be offered for settlement because I expect to litigate it out and win.”

According to Zahn’s lawsuit, Fox frequently prevented his employees from taking a full lunch break and that “a break that involved anything other than using the restroom was a luxury.” If the phones went unanswered, the plaintiff claims in her lawsuit, “Steve Fox would become angry and belligerent if a potential client called while everyone was at lunch and no one picked up the phone.”

In addition to no lunch breaks, Zahn claims that she was forced to work an average of 50 hours per week but was never paid overtime as required by state law. “Instead he paid her a weekly ‘salary’ of $461.54,” the lawsuit claims, alleging Fox treated her “as though she were exempt” from overtime regulations.  In some instances, the former employee claims she worked more than 60 hours, dropping her salary below minimum wage.

“But Ms. Zahn was not just underpaid,” the lawsuit claims. “She was also denied other basic rights afforded California employees.”

Fox allegedly used staffers for his own benefit

Perhaps the most damaging of the allegations contained in the lawsuit are claims that Fox used government employees both when he was on the board of Antelope Valley College and while he was in the Assembly to perform unpaid work on his behalf. When Fox moved from the college board to the Assembly, “Ms. Zahn hoped things would improve,” according to the complaint. “However, she soon discovered that, in addition to her numerous new duties that she had to perform as a State employee, Fox continued to expect her to perform law office work — this time for free.”

In her lawsuit, Zahn claims that she fielded client phone calls, prepared legal briefs and filed documents on behalf of law clients at the courthouse. In one instance, at Fox’s bequest, the district director of Fox’s government office instructed a state employee to complete a trial brief while on the government clock.

When an employee complained about the inappropriate nature of mixing Fox’s business with government work, according to the lawsuit, “Steve Fox said words to the effect of ‘Don’t worry about it. No one will ever find out.'”

“They are untrue,” Fox said, when asked specifically about those allegations. “There was no request to use public employees for my private law practice.”

Fox’s chief of staff discharged

According to the lawsuit, Fox’s first chief of staff tried to stop the inappropriate actions of mixing personal business with government employees.

“The Chief of Staff expressed concern about the law practice not being separate, and made comments to the effect that Steve Fox should ‘get out of the law office’ and ‘he shouldn’t be practicing law while he’s with the Assembly,'” the lawsuit claims. Shortly thereafter, the chief of staff was discharged.

Fox refused to speak about the circumstances surrounding the departure of his first chief of staff because “that’s a personnel matter.” He said that employees in his district office are not under his control.

“They were not my employees,” he said. “You would have to talk to the Rules Committee.”

The state Legislature is notorious for maintaining a “cloak of secrecy around misconduct claims” involving elected officials. “Lawmakers have repeatedly kept workplace misconduct claims secret, releasing only the settlement papers — and only when requests are made citing state records law,” the Los Angeles Times reported in 2009. “The agreements are not adopted at public meetings or included in public files, as other legislative business is.”

The allegations in the lawsuit could have proven damaging in Fox’s re-election campaign. In 2012, Fox was elected to the 36th Assembly District by a razor-thin margin of 145 votes. Republicans hold a slight advantage in voter registration and have made picking up the seat one of its top priorities.

Here is a link to the lawsuit filed against Fox.

By Steven Greenhut

Democrats and Republicans in the California Legislature have once again broadcast this troubling fact: they are far more concerned about the ever-expanding demands of a relatively small group of public sector union members than they are about the public welfare of the citizens of our state.

On May 17, the state Assembly voted 68-0 to support the most despicable piece of legislation that’s come through the halls in a while, which is saying a lot given the foolhardy proposals routinely on display in Sacramento. (It still requires approval by the Senate and the governor.)

The bill, AB 2299, allows a broad swath of public officials — police, judges and various public safety officials — to hide their names from public property records. It is based on the unproven notion that criminals use such records to find the homes of law enforcement officers, then track them down to commit harm. This could theoretically happen, but even the most overheated advocates of the bill can’t point to specific instances. Lots of things can happen, theoretically.

The Sacramento Bee editorial page, hardly a font of anti-government-worker thinking, made the obvious point: “None of the testimony presented in committee indicated criminals seeking to harm law enforcement officials actually got information about where their targets lived from property records. Most just followed them home from work.”

An open invitation to fraud and theft

The state is about to destroy the most significant source of public records, and create an open invitation to fraud and theft in order to combat a phantom threat. The bill was introduced by a legislator who ought to know better — Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles. Not long ago, Feuer argued that openness is the key to stopping abuse in his city’s terminally troubled children’s court system, but now he is the champion of secrecy.

“AB 2299 would bar journalists and the public from investigating the situation unfolding in Los Angeles where the assessor is accused of collecting campaign contributions from property owners in exchange for lowered property assessments,” wrote the California Newspaper Publishers Association’s Jim Ewert in a letter to Feuer. “The bill would completely insulate and protect any public safety official who might be involved in this type of scheme …”

Public officials and their family members will be able to hide their identities, which will undermine the reliability of property transactions. Dirty officials will pull off real estate scams without scrutiny. If an assessor did mistakenly release a record, those officials could receive financial judgments paid by the taxpayers. As the Bee asked, “If names are redacted, could law enforcement officials prevent their estranged wives or husbands from asserting a legitimate legal interest in the property?” The property system will become far less reliable. Buyers will be less able to guarantee that the title they receive is free and clear.

What a mess we are creating, all because union officials are constantly pushing for new and expanded privileges for their members, and because legislators never have the courage to say no. Law enforcement advocates constantly trumpet the dangers their members face, but they often exaggerate such dangers. They ignore that many other people who work outside government face dangers, too. Bail bondsmen face potential dangers from criminals, as do various attorneys and average citizens going about their lives. It’s not right to bolster the idea that public officials are members of a separate caste with rights and protections that exceed those enjoyed by the citizenry at large.

Historical government fraud and abuse

It’s fundamental to our democratic society that government officials are held to the same standards as the rest of us. Yet we see many scandals involving public officials, many crimes committed by duly sworn officers. Do we really need yet another privilege that exempts “them” from the standards that apply to the rest of “us.”

One can be sure that the number of protected categories will expand rapidly and quietly. Even the original list is fairly broad. Within weeks, lobbyists for other public-sector unions will insist that code enforcers, billboard inspectors and milk testers receive the same protections given the dangers these officials supposedly face. If you think I’m overstating this, then consider that the latter categories made that same argument to gain expanded “public safety” pensions.

Many officials will abuse this, just as police and their families routinely abuse the “professional courtesy” granted by other officers to evade traffic tickets and DUIs. In 2008, the Orange County Register published an investigation about a special license plate program “designed 30 years ago to protect police from criminals, [that] has been expanded to cover hundreds of thousands of public employees — from police dispatchers to museum guards — who face little threat from the public. Their spouses and children can get the plates, too. This has happened despite warnings from state officials that the safeguard is no longer needed because updated laws have made all DMV information confidential to the public.”

The newspaper found that these public servants often run red lights and drive on toll roads without paying the tolls because the agencies cannot access the addresses, which are in a protected database. When these scofflaw government employees are pulled over by police officers, the newspaper reported, they often are let go with a warning because their protected plate status signals that they are part of the law enforcement fraternity. After the Register article, the Legislature actually voted to expand the number of categories of employee eligible for the program.

Now this two-tier craziness will expand to our property ownership system, undermining public records and allowing corrupt public employees to exploit other people. We know from history that free and open societies are the ones least susceptible to corruption. Yet the California Assembly has decided to cast aside those time-tested lessons and put the demands of unions above the needs of the public. So what else is new?

(Steven Greenhut is vice president of journalism for the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. Write to him at steven.greenhut@franklincenterhq.org.)