On Tuesday, Fairfield Mayor Catherine Moy announced she would be resigning from office, but not before releasing a letter to the public.
She announced she is now a private citizen and the letter explained why she was stepping down, the harassment, legal disputes, impact on her family and how everything had taken a toll on her health. She also shared the City has violated her civil rights/due process; they selectively persecuted me; and violated state open meeting laws, the Brown Act.
With the resignation, Vice Mayor Pam Bertani will serve as mayor.
The following letter was released:
June 9, 2026
City Manager David Gassaway and fellow Fairfielders,
My family and I for almost 18 years made many sacrifices for our beloved hometown of Fairfield. It has never been easy, but we were honored to have voters’ support and blessings.
My days of serving as an elected official in our hometown ends today. I am at peace with being a private citizen of Fairfield, as I was most of my life.
I leave the Mayorship in the very capable hands of Vice Mayor Pam Bertani. She and I have served together for many years. She is the only person on the City Council besides me to have earned office in a citywide vote. She is by far the most qualified to lead and loves our city dearly. In addition, Vice Mayor Bertani will be the first African-American woman to serve as Mayor. She wouldn’t say that, so I will. Please extend your full support to her.
Extreme Duress
I will take you through how I came to this decision and tell you a snapshot of what’s happening behind closed doors. (I won’t divulge confidential information, as some Council members have routinely done.)
My family and I have suffered extreme duress and discrimination; the City has violated my civil rights/due process; they selectively persecuted me; and violated state open meeting laws, the Brown Act, as the Daily Republic rightfully reported on Jan. 20, 2026.
Today, I am releasing to you my defense attorney’s report and a letter from the special counsel that directly contradicts what he said publicly about whether I could legally attend meetings about my status as Mayor. This is not some insignificant detail but representative of the efforts to have me unrepresented, or absent from active efforts to harm me. Special Counsel Gary Winuk refused to include my lawyer’s complete defense as part of his report. He also did not allow me or my lawyer to respond to the report before releasing it to the entire City Council. It seems important to ask why there are inconsistencies and omissions from an investigator who presented himself as someone extremely concerned with following rules, laws and ethics.
So, the public spent roughly $70,000 on a one-sided “investigation” and that report didn’t include the defense of the person being investigated.
City Manager David Gassaway attended the questionable closed sessions and has tried to stay out of the middle of the dispute. He told me the four Councilmembers’ (Scott Tonnesen, K. Patrice Williams, Doriss Panduro and Doug Carr) Quo Warranto investigation is “political” and he has nothing to do with it. But he also refused to pay my legal defense bills because, he said, he didn’t want to lose his job. (The City manager has authority to spend up to $100,000 without Council signoff.)
The City paid to persecute me using taxpayer money in a political investigation and didn’t afford me a defense, which I asked for on at least 3 separate occasions. Thus, the City and four Council members blatantly violated my Constitutionally protected civil rights.
The City willfully ignored the fact that a Councilman leases an apartment in San Francisco so he’s closer to his work in Silicon Valley. He stays with family when he’s in Fairfield.
But the City chose to pay investigators to hunt me, stake-out my family and friends, intimidate and question my neighbors to produce a report that would continue a negative narrative meant to distract and destroy. The use of taxpayer funds to do this is nothing short of outrageous and does accurately illustrate how Tonnesen, Williams, Panduro and Carr choose to spend their time and energy, effectively ignoring real city business.
Just this morning, I received an email from City Attorney David Lim saying that Tonnesen and Williams have attempted to Agendize the removal of Planning Commissioner George Kennedy. Kennedy ran against Williams in the last election and is strongly considering another run to unseat Williams this November. He also acted as a Whistle Blower, publicly outlining how K Patrice Williams allegedly violated the law by creating a city logo to make an attack on me look like
So, Williams and Tonnesen decided they would try to remove Commissioner Kennedy before the election, knocking down a challenger and Whistleblower. Commissioner Kennedy has served for a long time and is highly knowledgeable. Tonnesen and Williams only care about political games and use their positions, as they did with me, to hurt others and our city.
Fairfield’s Pain
As you know, over the past few weeks, Fairfield has suffered horrific loss, turmoil, and currently mourns the life of Jamario Baker, while we pray for other victims of the shooting at Sem Yeto’s graduation.
When a fight broke out at Fairfield High School on May 20, 2026, officers responded. Videos from that incident went viral. People, including me, were emotionally shaken, and had many questions. We still do.
At a subsequent City Council meeting on May 26, 2026, citizens and outsiders expressed their hurt, anger, and hate. Aside from the involved police officer, most of the hate was focused on me. I understand – to a point.
People believe that all Mayors have the power to fire police officers, police chiefs, and anybody else they see fit. That is not true in Fairfield, which is a General Law city. Neither the Mayor nor City Council have that power. The City Manager and Police Chief are responsible, neither of whom stepped up to own this in any meaningful way, much less stand up and be accounted for before the media. They left me and the City Council out to dry. The protesters took over the chambers, yelling, chanting, calling names. I’m thankful for my friend Pastor Sam Morris who helped calm the crowd.
Prior to the next council meeting a week later on June 2, 2026, the Vice Mayor, City Manager, Police Chief, Assistant City Manager, and I met. I wanted to get back to doing the citizens’ regular business. They agreed. We came up with a plan to ensure we could keep regular order at the meeting while allowing folks to exercise their First Amendment rights. A very close friend of mine, family really, and her daughters came to the meeting to support me. I asked them not to come, as I didn’t want to subject them to the attacks I knew were coming for me. They came anyway because of our love for each other.
The Council Chamber once again became a volatile protest. The protesters’ yelling, chanting, and name-calling made it impossible to do the City’s business. A resident spoke at the meeting and the crowd didn’t like what he had to say. So, police escorted the citizen out for his safety
I looked at my friend sitting in the back of the chamber, simply to be with me. She was weeping. That was the final straw. I would no longer subject my family or friends to the madness and pain of what I and others faced. We all deserve peace and respect.
Nobody should suffer the persecution, stalking, libel, government intrusion, intimidation, and questioning that my family, friends, and I have endured – just because I stepped up to serve after my friend, Councilman Matt Garcia, was murdered in 2008. The pain and suffering have been staggering. My health has suffered. More importantly, my family and friends have been hurt. Our daughter is leaving Fairfield, where she was born and raised, because of people harassing her and violating her privacy, thanks to the city’s investigators and fueled by K Patrice Williams’ ongoing lies on social media.
Back to madness at the City Council meeting: The Police Chief came to me and said we should take a break. I agreed. After that, the rest of the plan went out the window. The City Attorney told me it was up to the Police Chief to decide what to do, not me as Mayor, even though I am the president of the City Council and the Mayor, according to California State law. This rendered me unable to lead or do my job and is wrong on so many levels.
When I was elected as Mayor in 2022, the vote was overwhelming. No question. Not one council member supported me, but the voters did.
I set meetings with each of the councilors to make sure we would all work together. I told them that we must, and I would support them in their districts and would need support in return to make Fairfield thrive.
I’ll never forget my meeting with Councilman Scott Tonnesen. He asked me: “How did you do it? We all worked to beat you!”
Despite the election friction, the City Council and I got a lot accomplished from new parks, a downtown plan that has brought new business, pickleball courts, afterschool programs, beautifying West Texas Street and downtown, a new General Plan that protects Suisun Valley from sprawl, and so much more.
Then one day in 2024 or 2025, a Vacaville resident and some women made public statements at a meeting about me and a councilman not living in Fairfield. I’ve heard all kinds of things in my time, so I shrugged it off.
Later, I found out the man was an employee of California Forever, the billionaires-backed company aiming to build an Oakland-size city on farmland that will endanger Travis AFB. He’s also a friend of Tonnesen. I was the first to track Flannery/California Forever, and reported on the LLC buying up land in eastern Solano County. They saw me as their biggest political threat because I continued to investigate and work with others.
The attacks on me continued, but stopped on the councilman. I found out why: The councilman, in July 2025, publicly expressed his support of California Forever in a media report.
It was clear that California Forever was going to poison the well if I decided to run for re-election or for District 3 County Supervisor. I was correct. And they got exactly what they wanted and needed from Tonnesen and Council Members Doug Carr, K. Patrice Williams, and Doriss Panduro – the Fairfield4 or VistaRidge4 – as citizens call them. All of them are California Forever supporters, and Tonnesen and Panduro want to be mayor, but have been unable to defeat me in citywide elections.
Tonnesen had planned all along on ways to disenfranchise 12,055 residents who voted for me for Mayor. A full year before we sold our house in Fairfield in 2025, Tonnesen told a friend he was going to get me out of office, according to a sworn affidavit of that person. When we finally sold, he said: Now we’re going to get that bitch.
Councilman Carr went to the Solano County District Attorney in June 2025, asking they investigate my residency. Then the Daily Republic ‘mysteriously’ got the information and the four councilors got their headlines to make this appear legitimate.
Carr had told me that I should go easier on California Forever because they might pay for new soccer fields in Fairfield and that would get him re-elected.
The District Attorney cleared me.
But the four councilors weren’t done. Next, K. Patrice Williams wanted to agendize the process for a Quo Warranto – a law that was first used by King Henry III – to look into my residency. I agreed because I have nothing to hide and I had promised all council members I would agendize what they wanted. I kept my word.
The City Attorney and City Manager reached out to K. Patrice Williams to offer her a meeting in which I could show her documentation of where I lived. She refused. She didn’t want to meet. Instead, she decided to expend taxpayer funds to interfere with the election.
City Attorney Lim hired an outside lawyer, Gary Winuk (who, it turns out, had failed to disclose his office’s prior investigation of me and my family and shouldn’t have been hired. I was cleared in this political hit, too). Winuk scheduled a closed session, which state law allows only under very specific and narrow exceptions. Everything that was done behind closed doors should’ve been done in the public, for obvious reasons. Thus, the Quo Warranto process was conducted in an illegal manner. Again, the Daily Republic warned about this violation of law if the City insisted on going behind closed doors.
Exonerated
Winuk investigated and found that there was no evidence that I lived outside of Fairfield. My husband and I gave tax returns, power bills, insurance bills, mortgages, etc.
But the four council members didn’t like that answer. K. Patrice Williams had already concluded I didn’t live in Fairfield – even after Mr. Winuk said he found no evidence of her conclusion. K. Patrice Williams repeatedly declared her position on social media and ignored Winuk and the DA.
The timing was perfect for the four council members who supported my opponent in the county supervisors’ race. K. Patrice Williams pushed to get more headlines before Election Day. This was clear election interference – that the California Forever employee had long ago planted and the four delivered under the guise of city business. California Forever’s business partners spent more than $30,000 attacking me in my race based on the scheme and lies that K. Patrice Williams, Scott Tonnesen, Doug Carr, and the California Forever employee concocted.
Mr. Winuk hired Elizabeth Lai, former FBI counter-terrorism agent, to stake-out my family, friends, and follow me.
I met her when my husband and I were at our 25-year-old office in Suisun Valley and saw an unfamiliar car on our property. I went out and stepped into the middle of the road with my hand up. I was shocked to see Mr. Winuk and the former FBI agent trespassing. I told them they were trespassing – but, of course, they knew it as it’s posted. Mr. Winuk said he was leaving, but he stopped to take pictures of the vehicles on our property. What is disturbing is that Mr. Winuk took time in his “report” to note they “drove onto a road adjacent to the property.” Why would Mr. Winuk find it necessary to include this seemingly unrelated detail other than his own reputation management, knowing he had trespassed on to my property and chose to rewrite what had actually occurred?
This aggressive and intrusive behavior was excessive given this was a civil process – not a criminal investigation. A counter- terrorism agent?
At this point, I was getting physically ill from the harassment, stalking, and libel. I’m a survivor of a rare, incurable cancer; I have Type 1 diabetes, and the stress was affecting my blood sugars that would swing from dangerous lows to highs, then back again. It happened at meetings and at home. The public witnessed it. My family asked me to leave my leadership role. I kept working.
But my friend crying, another friend constantly worrying, my sister begging me to take care of myself and leave the mayorship – all convinced me that leaving is what’s right for my family, my local friends, and me.
I wanted to push forward, because the facts and the law are on my side. But I won’t spend another day fighting because my family and friends are much more important, as is my health.
Thank you, Fairfield, for allowing me to serve you. I’ll see you at the store, a coffee shop or the parks. We did a lot together. We’ll continue work as fellow citizens.
I love you,
Catherine “Cat” Moy
Fairfield resident
