"I hope that $4 million speaks loudly," said their lawyer, J. Gary Gwilliam, in an interview Monday. "They're heroes. They stood up. Their careers were ruined."
The air district board of directors approved the settlement on Oct. 2, according to agency spokeswoman Kristine Roselius.
"The air district has denied, and continues to deny, all allegations of wrongdoing," Roselius said in an email.
"The board made this decision in the best interests of the communities we serve and to uphold our fiduciary responsibility. We made the decision to settle the complaint rather than consume the air district's resources on an issue that would have distracted us from our mission to protect the Bay Area's residents and its climate," she said.
The former employees' lawsuit said that while the district claimed Bachmann was fired for violating the agency's vehicle use policy, insubordination and dishonesty on his employment application, the real reason he lost his job was retaliation over his complaints involving the public records.
Bachmann and Steele said the district violated public records and labor laws and demanded compensation for lost wages and benefits, emotional distress and attorneys' fees.
The public records allegations arose as the air district prepared to move from its previous offices on Ellis Street in San Francisco to the Bay Area Metro Center on Beale Street.
Bachmann was tasked with collecting, storing and creating an inventory for the agency's public documents. In 2015 he hired Steele to help remove files from the agency's old office, digitize and store them at a storage site in Richmond.
The lawsuit says that in August 2015, Bachmann learned from an agency employee that documents tied to a lawsuit involving a now-closed Berkeley factory were being destroyed, even though they were subject to a court subpoena.
The suit adds that in November 2015, Bachmann told a top district official that agency staff were throwing away notices of violations, flare reports and documents tied to ongoing litigation. The suit claims the district's chief legal counsel told Bachmann that the agency did not need to document what it was destroying.
In December 2015, the suit recounted, Bachmann and Steele discovered that several thousand enforcement records, which included documents about air quality violations and district communication, were deleted from an online database.
The lawsuit claims both employees were subject to a "bogus investigation" after raising concerns the records were being improperly destroyed.
Steele claimed that in January 2016, flare reports for the Chevron, Tesoro (now called Marathon) and Shell refineries were being discarded in a dumpster. She said after telling district staff she needed to collect and inventory the documents, a top official at the agency blocked her from doing so and complained about her.
Weeks later Bachmann was put on administrative leave for violating the district's vehicle use policy, the suit said. Steele was fired, she was told, because her project was over. The lawsuit claims her job was given to another worker who went on to destroy more agency records.
Gwilliam says the settlement changes Bachmann's employment status from "terminated" to "retired."
He likened Bachmann and Steele to the whistleblower who raised concerns about the July 25 phone call between President Trump and the president of Ukraine that led to the current articles of impeachment.
"Whistleblowers like Michael and Sarah need to be honored and appreciated," he said. "These are the kinds of people we need to keep organizations, public and nonpublic, honest."
Correction: Based on statements from Michael Bachmann's attorney, this story originally reported that Bachmann's settlement with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District changed his employment status with the agency from "terminated" to "retired" so that he could receive retirement benefits. The attorney's firm now says that the change in status will not qualify Bachmann for retirement benefits.
