Rialto, California mayor Deborah Robertson is suing her own city for ... trends now

A California mayor is suing her own city for $7.5million – and is still running for re-election.

Deborah Robertson, 73, has been mayor of Rialto, a city of a little over 100,000 people east of Los Angeles, since 2012.

City documents show she filed three separate claims last year alleging age and racial discrimination, invasion of privacy and improper handling of her retirement fund, with a total liability she estimated at $7,482,000.

She has now taken her own administration to court in two lawsuits after it reviewed and denied her claims internally.

The extraordinary move has sparked outrage from residents and her fellow council members, who called it 'self-serving' and 'shocking'.

Councilman Rafael Trujillo, who is also running for Mayor, told DailyMail.com: 'It's shocking, because if you're not the fiduciarily responsible representative, then who is there for the taxpayer?

'She's so embroiled in all these lawsuits, she's lost sight of the direction of the city.'

Robertson's claim is equal to 3.3% of the entire city budget for the year, or about $75 per Rialto resident.

The claims she leveled against the city include:

Her colleagues discriminated against her by not giving her ergonomic furniture after she was injured in a 2019 one-car accident  The city discriminated against her by not giving her a special security door in case of an active shooter, while giving another councilor one, because she is black Police looked her up on a law enforcement database without a good crime-fighting reason The city owes her compensation for giving her the wrong kind of retirement fund

Fellow Rialto councilman, Ed Scott, told DailyMail.com he worked closely with the mayor for years and is perplexed by her claims.

He said the city did offer Robertson and all other leaders ergonomic furniture, and they also eventually installed a security door in her office, but were delayed in part because of the pandemic and her plans to move office.

He said the councilman she called 'Caucasian' who got a security door first, was in fact Trujillo, a Latino.

'I don't think it was a fair analogy on her part that she was being singled out,' Scott said. 'I just think a lot of nothing was made of it.

'To my knowledge, she's always been accommodated when she's had an issue. They've changed her furniture in her office a number of times. So I'm not quite sure what that's all about.'

Scott, a Republican, said he himself had been a victim of police snooping, after pro-union officers allegedly searched his and his dead son's details on their database to dig up dirt against his re-election bid.

He won a $500,000 settlement from the city in November 2021 over it. But he said the mayor's near-identical claim with an eye-watering $6million demand didn't make sense, because she is a pro-union Democrat, with no reason to be smeared.

'I'm amazed by it. I've known her for a very long time, so I'm very surprised by it,' Scott said.

Trujillo said the city audited police records following Scott's claim, and found no similar improper searches against Robertson or other councilors.

'They checked everybody,' he said. 'There were explanations attached to every one of them. Everything cleared out for everybody.'

Trujillo said the mayor's lawsuits have left the city administration in disarray, without a trusted leader.

'There's a sense that she's just looking around for the next lawsuit,' he said. 'Is her time really being spent leading the city or is it being spent finding another opportunity to bring another lawsuit?

'She's lost sight of the direction of the

read more from dailymail.....