A California state worker who alleged he lost his job because he cooperated with various investigations into a tax agency has settled a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit he filed over his termination.

Mark DeSio, now spokesman for state Treasurer Fiona Ma, declined to comment.

His attorney, Erik Roper, confirmed the settlement had been reached but declined to disclose the amount of money DeSio would receive in the agreement.

Stacie Spector, spokeswoman for the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration, declined to comment and described the lawsuit as pending litigation.

Records in Sacramento County Superior Court show that DeSio has filed a notice of a conditional settlement. The case has not been dismissed.

His lawsuit centered on a set of audits into the Board of Equalization, the tax agency where DeSio worked in 2016 and 2017. The board was the only state agency in the nation that both collected tax and served as a court for taxpayer disputes.

DeSio was among the sources for investigations that revealed nepotism, questionable hiring, and elected board members misusing public employees for events that appeared to have little to do with collecting taxes, such as parking cars at a women’s empowerment event.

Those audits followed years of news stories in The Sacramento Bee and other publications that showed questionable purchasing practices and potential conflicts of interest among elected board members.

The Legislature stripped the board of almost all its power and staff after the audits in June 2017 and created the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration to take on most of the board’s work in tax collection. The new department is under the control of the Governor’s Office.

Like most Board of Equalization employees, DeSio was reassigned to the new tax department. He was dismissed in October 2017 by former Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration.

DeSio appealed his dismissal at the State Personnel Board and later filed a lawsuit in October 2018.

Ma, who was an elected member of the Board of Equalization during the audits, hired DeSio in 2019 after she won statewide office as treasurer. DeSio was unable to find comparable work in the year or so in between his dismissal and his hiring by Ma, Ma said in a recent interview.

Ma has said DeSio’s dismissal underscores shortcomings in California’s whistleblower protection laws.

“What Mr. DeSio’s case brutally and mercilessly hammers home is that our whistleblower retaliation protection laws really do nothing to actually prevent whistleblower retaliation from happening,” said Roper, DeSio’s attorney. “And that when it does happen, those laws do nothing to ensure that the individuals responsible for the unlawful retaliation are punished for their lawlessness.”

This story was originally published February 13, 2020 at 5:00 AM.