The Peralta Community College District board of directors decided not to fire an employee whom Chancellor Elihu Harris apparently believed leaked damning information about him to the press. According to the Contra Costa Times, the board chose instead to suspend Jennifer Lenahan for two weeks without pay and ordered her transferred to a different department. Lenahan was an assistant to Peralta’s financial chief Tom Smith, and had been accused of leaking information about Harris to the Times. In July, the Times and its sister paper, the Oakland Tribune, published a series of stories that exposed questionable decisions by Harris, including steering a lucrative contract to his longtime business partner. After the stories came out, Harris and other administrators tried to fire Lenahan, but the board last night refused to go along with her termination.
FOLLOW US
