The city of Vallejo has reached a $1.85 million settlement agreement with two former employees who allege they were wrongfully terminated in 2020, bringing the city’s total payout for the whistleblower lawsuit to nearly $3 million.

Slater Matzke and Will Morat, who worked on Vallejo’s senior leadership team under former city manager Greg Nyhoff, said they have faced financial and professional ruin since raising concerns about allegedly corrupt business dealings, unchecked discrimination, and retaliation by top city officials. Meanwhile, they said, Vallejo officials have dodged accountability.

“In the end, the community is the one that suffers,” Morat said in a Tuesday interview with Open Vallejo. “We spoke out in hopes of changing something. I don’t think anything has changed yet. The people who ignored and retaliated against whistleblowers, they’re still at City Hall, pulling a public paycheck from public dollars.”

Matzke, Morat, and a third former Vallejo employee, Joanna Altman, filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against Vallejo and several top officials in February 2021. The city settled with Altman for $1 million in March. The trio alleged that Nyhoff fired them after learning they had raised concerns about his management of the city during a third-party investigation that they were promised would remain confidential, according to the lawsuit.

Randall Strauss, the whistleblowers’ attorney, said he was thrilled his clients have been vindicated after a years-long...

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