{"id":322457,"date":"2026-05-19T06:57:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T06:57:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/322457\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T06:57:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T06:57:29","slug":"degrading-and-unprofessional-text-messages-in-oakland-brentwood-city-manager-participated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/322457\/","title":{"rendered":"“Degrading and Unprofessional” Text Messages in Oakland, Brentwood City Manager Participated"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t74<\/p>\n

Brentwood City Manager G. Harold Duffey has been implicated in a text message scandal out of the City of Oakland during his time working in the city.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Mayor Barbara Lee announced she had accepted the resignation of City Administrator Jestin Johnson over inappropriate messages.<\/p>\n

According to Oaklandside<\/a>, Johnson and Harold Duffey (now Brentwood City Manager) discussed female employees in inappropriate terms. \u00a0The text message exchanged occurred in spring of 2024.<\/p>\n

Lee called the comments \u201cdegrading and unprofessional\u201d communications. Thousands of text messages have now been made available on the City of Oakland website.<\/p>\n

\nStatement on the Resignation of the City Administrator\n<\/p>\n

I have met with and accepted the resignation of City Administrator Jestin Johnson. On Friday evening, I learned about certain degrading and unprofessional communications involving Mr. Johnson. We promptly conducted our own investigation and verified these communications, which are wholly incompatible with the values of this administration and those of the people of Oakland. Under my watch, I will not tolerate transgressions of this nature. <\/p>\n

I have appointed Assistant City Administrator Elizabeth (\u201cBetsy\u201d) Lake to serve as Acting City Administrator, and the City Council has been informed. Ms. Lake has worked in the City Administration for over eight years and is an experienced attorney with over 30 years of practice. <\/p>\n

I want to reassure Oakland residents that government services and operations will not be affected during this time of transition. I was elected to represent the values of the Oakland community and that work and commitment continues. <\/p>\n

Mayor Barbara Lee<\/p>\n

City of Oakland<\/p>\n

Update:<\/p>\n

You can review thousands of pages of documents by clicking here<\/a>.\u00a0 Here is one of the exchanges here:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Sources<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"74 Brentwood City Manager G. Harold Duffey has been implicated in a text message scandal out of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[12871,7186,41061,143,145,144],"class_list":["post-322457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-city-of-oakland","tag-harold-duffey","tag-jestin-johnson","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}