Fired Oakland finance official alleges retaliation – The Oaklandside

The Oaklandside
The Oaklandside. Journalism for Oakland.
Barbara Lee’s transition team | How Trump’s threats to sanctuary cities could affect Oakland | Violence prevention programs defunded by Trump administration
With your help, we can tell the Oakland stories that matter to you and your fellow Oaklanders. Will you donate to our spring fundraising campaign to support our reporting?
A high-ranking city official who was fired in November has filed a legal claim against Oakland, accusing city leaders of discrimination, harassment, retaliation, defamation, emotional distress, and other wrongdoing.
Sherry Denham-Jackson was Oakland’s revenue and tax administrator, responsible for overseeing the city’s collection of various taxes and other sources of money that are crucial to the budget. She left the city last November as Oakland scrambled to patch a multimillion-dollar deficit caused by rising spending and stagnating revenues.
In a legal claim filed on April 1, Denham-Jackson alleges her termination was illegal. She is demanding $5 million in economic damages, $3 million due to emotional stress, and general damages of $2 million.
A legal claim is typically the precursor of a lawsuit.
Oakland’s city attorney said they are reviewing Denham-Jackson’s claim and developing a response.
Never miss a story. Sign up for The Oaklandside’s free daily newsletter.

Δ
Before she was fired, dozens of employees in Denham-Jackson’s department had complained about her performance, including through a petition to the city administrator, saying Denham-Jackson had “repeatedly failed to plan, organize, manage, and direct through subordinate supervisors the work of the Revenue Bureau.”
Denham-Jackson claims that in 2023, she discovered “fraudulent charges” in Oakland’s attempts to fine residents and businesses who were delinquent on paying their garbage collection bills. Oakland had wrongfully collected millions extra, according to her claim. When she tried to raise this issue with her colleagues, Denham-Jackson says they refused to help her, and she started to be shunned.
Much of her claim also focuses on her inability to attend church services on Tuesday evenings since Oakland holds City Council meetings on that day. According to Denham-Jackson, when she was hired, the council’s finance committee meetings were held between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. She was allowed to attend remotely, but in the summer of 2023, this changed and she was ordered to appear in person at meetings that often went later than five.
As a Jehovah’s Witness, Denham-Jackson says attending a bible study and prayer on Tuesday nights in San Francisco is a “central tenet” of her faith. “Another central tenet of the religion is to never allow work to interfere with the practice of faith,” her attorneys wrote in her legal claim.
When she asked for accommodations, Denham-Jackson alleges, “her request fell on deaf ears” and she was subjected to a “hostile work environment.”
In November, Denham-Jackson says she contracted pneumonia. About two weeks later, she was asked to come in for work. She was placed on administrative leave shortly after and fired.
Denham-Jackson also wrote in her legal claim that a social media account operated by an East Oakland man was somehow able to obtain a copy of her termination letter before she was and post a photo of the document on the internet. “The operator of the twitter handle @EastOaklandDad is not known to be an employee of the city, thus he should not have had access to Denham-Jackson’s termination letter before Denham-Jackson herself,” her attorneys wrote.
Prior to working for Oakland, Denham-Jackson was a principal administrative analyst with the San Francisco Unified School District, where she helped with the district’s budget. She was fired in 2021 and filed a lawsuit against SFUSD the next year, alleging discrimination, a hostile work environment, retaliation, and claiming whistleblower status. The case was settled for an undisclosed amount last year.
Last summer, 30 staff in the revenue bureau signed a petition accusing Denham-Jackson of mismanaging the crucial city agency and preventing them from collecting money owed to the city.
The staffers sent their petition to Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao on Aug. 20 declaring a “vote of no confidence” in Denham-Jackson and saying her “dereliction of duty contributed to the [city’s] historical budget deficit.”
This followed an attempt in December 2023 by several revenue bureau staffers to confince City Administrator Jestin Johnson to meet with them to discuss “wide-ranging problems and issues caused by Sherry Jackson’s inability and unwillingness to perform her duties as the Revenue and Tax Administrator.”
The letter-writers claimed Jackson wasn’t doing her job, thereby jeopardizing $118 million in business tax revenues.
Oakland’s budget situation hasn’t gotten much better since then. Facing a $265 million deficit over the next two years, the current budget proposal slashes over 400 jobs, most of which are currently vacant. It also relies on a not-yet-approved parcel tax to raise another $40 million per year for public safety services.
The city’s most recent revenue report showed Oakland on track to collect $756 million in revenue for the fiscal year ending in June. This is $29 million less than the budget assumed.
City staff say Oakland faces a “mixed fiscal landscape” because while some sources of tax and fee money have grown, “others face ongoing challenges from market conditions.”
Oaklandside reporter Eli Wolfe contributed to this story.
To mark our fifth anniversary we’ve set a goal to raise $50,000 in our spring membership campaign — and we’re counting on our readers to get us there.

"*" indicates required fields
Δ
Before joining The Oaklandside as News Editor, Darwin BondGraham was a freelance investigative reporter covering police and prosecutorial misconduct. He has reported on gun violence for The Guardian and was a staff writer for the East Bay Express. He holds a doctorate in sociology from UC Santa Barbara and was the co-recipient of the George Polk Award for local reporting in 2017. He is also the co-author of The Riders Come Out at Night, a book examining the Oakland Police Department’s history of corruption and reform.

We are part of

We’re journalists for Oakland. We amplify community voices, share information resources, and investigate systems, not just symptoms. Learn more