Fair Chief Quits; Policies Changed

Embattled Roger Vitaich has resigned as general manager of the Del Mar Fair, leading board members Wednesday to announce what they said are sweeping changes in the way accusations of sexual harassment from employees are handled at the fairgrounds.

Allan Royster, president of the 22nd District Agricultural Assn. that oversees the fairgrounds, announced the formation of a three-member committee composed of board members he said will personally hear a wide range of employee grievances, from alleged sexual harassment to management style.

Royster, who met early Wednesday with fair supervisors and state investigators who were probing allegations of sexual harassment against Vitaich, said officials are creating a working draft of an employee conduct policy, including issues such as the use of profanity and ways to report work-related problems.

Late Tuesday, in a three-hour closed meeting, board members voted 7 to 1 to accept Vitaich’s resignation from his $81,888-a-year job, tendered by letter late last week. Vitaich did not attend Tuesday’s meeting.

Officials also announced that they have offered Vitaich a deal to serve the board as a part-time consultant at a salary of $3,000 a month for the next 10 months as a way to smooth the transition of interim general manager Andy Mauro.

Royster stressed that, if accepted, Vitaich’s role would be as a consultant who would have no authority over fairgrounds employees--and, in fact, would not work on the fairgrounds.

“Maybe Roger is gone, but the fair board is taking big steps to create a new environment, a new playing field, that will prevent this board and future boards from a recurrence of what we have just gone through,” Royster said. “Our goal is to insert sensitivity into the workplace and to create a mechanism that will act as an early warning for all types of problems.”

The sudden resignation came as investigators from the state Department of Food and Agriculture were concluding an investigation into allegations raised by more than a dozen employees.

Although he refused to discuss specifics, Royster said the allegations, which first came to light in May, involved issues from alleged sexual harassment to management style “such as shouting, raising your voice, the way you address issues with people,” Royster said.

“The problem was that Roger had a way of business that might have been accepted in the 1970s or 1980s, but that some people won’t stand for anymore.”

One female fair employee who called The Times on Wednesday said she was angry that Royster would try to pass off Vitaich’s actions as solely bad language and aggressive management style.

The woman, who refused to give her name, said, “These were serious charges and we’re afraid that this is all being taken too lightly.”

The woman said there were more than 40 employees, men and women alike, who were either victims or were witnesses to reported harassment, all of whom were afraid to come forward for fear of retribution.

“There are 40 people who feel they are without justice here,” she said. “The point is, this just doesn’t involve females angry over dirty jokes or foul language. There are accusations of a touching nature here. And we’re just afraid that some state agency is going to hire Mr. Vitaich at some later date and these kinds of things will repeat themselves.”

Vitaich, 53, who was placed on administrative leave June 15, had served as the fair board’s general manager for 12 years. He has not spoken with board members since last month during a two-day session in which he discussed his version of several allegations reported against him, officials said.

Neither Vitaich nor his lawyer, San Diego attorney Ken Rose, could be reached for comment Wednesday.

“The move definitely surprised me,” Royster said of Vitaich’s resignation. “Sitting through all those meetings with investigators, I didn’t get the signal that he was prepared to walk away from his position.

“But frankly, I think most people on the board are relieved that they didn’t have to get into the nuts and bolts of the evidence to make a decision in this matter, playing judge and jury with people’s opposing perceptions of conversations that took place.”

Royster said Wednesday that, with Vitaich’s resignation, he considers the matter closed. “I never considered this a criminal investigation,” he said. “The state has probably concluded 95% of its work, and I don’t think anything like that will be the result.”

He added that, although fair employees who stepped forward were free to file individual lawsuits against Vitaich, he did not expect any such actions.

“I don’t think that will happen,” he said. “We’ve talked to the employees involved and their consensus was that they wanted certain changes in the workplace. I don’t think anyone was out to get Roger, they just wanted to get the nature of the allegations to cease to exist.

“With Roger’s leaving, the employees’ concerns have been removed.”

Royster said that the move to ask Vitaich to stay on as consultant was more to assist in transition than to offer him a continued means of employment. “Roger is a perfectionist, he’s got a photographic memory,” Royster said. “He can help us in all kinds of ways. But, as far as the money, he could earn a lot more going up and down the California coast doing consulting work.”

The allegations against Vitaich surfaced in June when a fair employee contacted Royster and asked to have a cup of coffee to express some work-related concerns.

“I sat there dumbfounded--maybe I’m naive, but I had never heard these types of allegations before,” Royster said. “And then more people came forward. All of a sudden we had five or six of these types of allegations, and we decided to ask the state for help in investigating the matter.”

A short time later, the board sent a memorandum inviting the fair’s 125 permanent employees to bring complaints about Vitaich or other supervisors. More than a dozen eventually stepped forward, he said.

“Right after the start of the investigation, we got a lot of anonymous letters, many of them on fair board stationary, some for Roger, saying he walked on water, the others calling him everything from Jack the Ripper to accusing him of starting the Chicago fire,” Royster said.

He said the letters were turned over to the state investigators, who later set themselves up in a hotel room to interview employees who might want to report work-related harassment.