SANDAG paid $143,000 to economist who says he was passed over for top job because he’s White

By Lucas Robinson | San Diego Union-Tribune (TNS)

In the year since he took over as chief executive at San Diego’s troubled regional planning agency, Mario Orso has shaken up leadership to cut all top deputy jobs and consolidate authority — but the effort has come at a cost, records obtained by The San Diego Union-Tribune show.

The San Diego County Association of Governments last year paid out $143,000 to its former chief economist Ray Major weeks after he threatened to sue, alleging he was passed over for the top job and later fired because he is White.

Major made his allegations in a letter to Orso dated three days after his firing from his nearly $371,000-a-year job.

Major, who also served as the agency’s chief deputy CEO, wrote that then-SANDAG board chair Nora Vargas said she wanted a “brown face” to lead the agency, and that he believed his firing months later by Orso was the product of discrimination.

“Piecing together a chain of events, I believe the cause for my termination was for an improper purpose based on race,” Major said.

Major declined to comment. SANDAG spokesperson Stacy Garcia did not return multiple requests for comment. Vargas did not return a message requesting comment sent through her website.

Major’s sacking followed the resignation of other top SANDAG officials in recent years, amid a scandal over the flawed toll-collection system that serves the 10-mile section of state Route 125 in South County.

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Former Chief Executive Hasan Ikhrata resigned in 2023, and after stepping in to replace him on an interim basis, former deputy CEO Coleen Clementson resigned last year soon after Orso was hired.

Former Chief Financial Officer Andre Douzdjian also left last year and has been replaced by longtime finance official Dawn Vettese.

None of those former top officials have filed legal claims with SANDAG, said Peter Stevens, an attorney for the agency.

Orso is a civil engineer who spent three decades at Caltrans — most recently as chief deputy director of its San Diego County district — before being hired last spring to head the agency that oversees the region’s transportation planning.

There at SANDAG, he’s paid $385,000 a year to oversee more than 400 employees and the agency’s annual $1.3 billion budget.

Since he took over, he has axed the deputy CEO positions, saying they no longer align with the “operational needs or strategic direction of the agency,” according to SANDAG’s upcoming budget. Salaries for those positions ranged from $218,000 to $411,000.

Solana Beach Mayor Lesa Heebner, the board’s current chair, said she supports the leadership changes Orso has been implementing.

“I trust him completely,” Heebner said in an interview. “When you’re coming into an organization that has been somewhat troubled, you keep everything close to you, and everybody reports to you until you can get a complete handle on everything that’s going on in the organization. I think that’s a smart thing, just to make sure that there’s good control, good checks and balances.”

Major’s letter

Since Major became SANDAG’s chief economist in 2015, his work studying and presenting regional economic data had earned him praise from board members and other local leaders.

In 2022, he and Clementson were elevated to deputy CEO positions under a leadership restructuring launched by Ikhrata. But as the toll road scandal unfolded, Ikhrata resigned, and Clementson stepped in as interim.

According to Major’s letter to Orso, at an August 2023 all-staff meeting where Ikhrata discussed his plans to resign, Vargas said she wanted a “brown face” as the next CEO. He said she repeated that sentiment at a luncheon where Ikhrata remarked that either Major or Clementson would make ideal successors.

After a national recruitment effort, finalists for the CEO job were Major, Orso and Patti Boekamp, a former director of engineering and capital projects for San Diego.

Major said in his letter that he had heard from board members later that, as they were interviewing finalists, they had felt bullied by Vargas into voting to select Orso. “Many of the board members expressed to me that I was the better qualified candidate,” he wrote.

“I believe that in litigation these board members would testify under oath they were pressured to vote for the Hispanic candidate,” he added, referring to Orso, the recipient of his letter.

Shortly into his tenure at SANDAG, Orso directed staff working on the replacement of the SR-125 toll system and the relocation of SANDAG’s headquarters to report to him instead of Major, then the lead official on the initiatives.

“Your lack of communication with me began to feel like retaliation against me for having competed for the CEO position and denying you a unanimous appointment,” Major wrote.

He said he had suffered as much as $3.3 million in damages but offered to settle for one year of severance plus $100,000, for a total of $471,000.

“I know that SANDAG does not want to go through expensive, time-consuming and politically messy litigation,” Major wrote in his letter.

SANDAG ended up settling for just under $143,000 — three months of his salary, or $92,700, plus another $50,000.

Other restructuring

Apart from the elimination of the deputy CEO jobs, another substantial shakeup to SANDAG’s structure came in April, when the board moved to hire an outside law firm to serve as its counsel.

Last year, the county grand jury criticized the lack of an independent counsel for the board, noting the potential conflict of interest in having the same lawyers advise both the agency and a board that at times can be at odds.

Instead of hiring an employee, the board decided to hire an outside firm — despite downsides to that option identified by Julie Wiley, SANDAG’s former general counsel, who was hired to study how the board could hire new legal representation.

An outside lawyer, she warned, would lack institutional knowledge, have their attention split between other clients, could pose conflicts of interest and face a longer hiring timeline.

But an outside attorney would be cheaper than hiring a new attorney to be a SANDAG employee, she said. Hiring a law firm would cost between $190,000 and $250,000 a year, while a staff attorney would be paid a salary ranging from $370,000 to $580,000, according to Wiley.

In April, the board voted 11-5 to begin looking for a law firm to represent it, to pointed criticism from some members.

“We’re setting up what I would call an organizational conundrum that we’re going to have two different counselors, and at some time they’re going to disagree, and they both work for us,” said Encinitas Mayor Bruce Ehlers. “And ultimately, we’re going to have to decide on which way to go.”

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