Yuba County supervisor faces censure amid ‘workplace misconduct’ accusations

A Yuba County supervisor accused of a string of workplace incidents, including alleged inappropriate comments and gestures made toward county employees, faces being censured and blocked from leadership positions on the board.

Yuba supervisors at a 1 p.m. special meeting Thursday will consider taking action against Supervisor Seth Fuhrer, after a third-party review of misconduct allegations found he had made inappropriate comments — sometimes sexual in nature — on several occasions during his tenure.

The allegations made by county workers also include, without consent, massaging an employee’s shoulders, pulling an employee’s hair and touching an employee on her nose and stomach, according to a report by human resources and labor firm Boucher Law.

Fuhrer allegedly referred to county harassment training as “sex training” and told one county worker to “stop flashing me” while she adjusted her shirt, according to the report. He also allegedly made other inappropriate comments while at a conference with other elected officials and staff from the California State Association of Counties and Rural County Representatives of California.

Supervisors will consider a resolution that would censure Fuhrer’s behavior while also blocking him from holding leadership positions on the board through 2025.

Fuhrer, who was first elected supervisor in 2020 and is currently vice chair, won re-election in March. He has described the allegations as a means of preventing him from becoming board chair in January and said that many of the incidents in the report were exaggerated or taken out of context, according to a post made to his Facebook account.

Fuhrer did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.

The report included interviews with 10 witnesses and an interview with Fuhrer, in which the investigator wrote that Fuhrer did not appear credible.

The resolution that supervisors will consider Thursday would also direct county workers to create a code of conduct for supervisors within 90 days and would suspend Fuhrer from attending conferences and meetings of the two state organizations where he has been accused of behaving inappropriately.

If passed by his colleagues, the move also would bar Furher from attending events on behalf of the county without another supervisor present and would direct all communication to county workers through the county administrator.

Fuhrer filed a lawsuit to block the report from becoming public earlier this month, calling the document “defamatory,” the Marysville Appeal-Democrat reported. A Yuba County judge quickly denied his request. Fuhrer also sought to stop the public meeting scheduled this week in favor of a private session.

What happened?

California State Association of Counties and Rural County Representatives of California sent a joint letter in August that banned Fuhrer from conferences and events through 2026, accusing him of “lewd, sexually suggestive, and inappropriate comments” at conferences in November 2023 and July.

The report commissioned by the county later upheld the allegations in the letter, claiming that Fuhrer had jokingly threatened another conference attendee on a “tiki boat,” allegedly pretending to push the attendee overboard.

Fuhrer, who’s Jewish, allegedly said at the July conference in Florida, according to the report, “You guys look like a bunch of Jews, are there any Jews in the house here, where are my Jews at?”

At the same conference, he allegedly made inappropriate comments toward a woman from another party who was wearing a wedding dress, saying, “Oh, you look hot in that, can I be your fiancé?”

The report details other “unwelcome” comments and incidents from the two conferences.

Fuhrer had not denied the comments when talking to the investigator, according to the report, but often said he “could not recall,” or that he may have but would not have done so maliciously.

Several instances of touching county workers were also included in the report, including when he allegedly pulled the back of a female employee’s hair while she was seated at her desk. In another incident, he allegedly put his hands on a woman’s shoulders during an anti-harassment training session, according to the report.

Fuhrer told investigators he did not remember those specific incidents, according to the report, and questioned why they would constitute harassment. In his Facebook post, Fuhrer explained similar incidents in which he said he had touched someone in some fashion that was mischaracterized in the report.

“I find humor gets me through a lot of life’s difficult to deal with issues but I have always respected the rights of others to not like my humor. ... And, as I stated before, I have always attempted to resolve any issues with others,” Fuhrer wrote on Facebook. “Publishing the investigative report and making a public spectacle is harassment and abuse of power.

“The goal is to stop me from being chair and to defame me in the eyes of my constituents.”

This story was originally published December 16, 2024 at 5:00 AM.