Three months after a former San Diego Association of Governments finance official was awarded millions of dollars for being wrongly fired, the same judge has ordered the regional planning agency to pay the whistleblower’s attorneys more than $1.7 million. The ruling issued last week pushes the cos t of the improper termination of SANDAG’s former finance director Lauren Warrem past $4 million. Lawyers representing Warrem — who was fired in 2023 after raising questions about flaws in the SANDAG toll-collection system on state Route 125 in the South Bay — initially sought just over $3 million in legal fees and other costs. But the judge in the binding arbitration case whittled the fees to $1.7 million, including a 25% “multiplier” to compensate for the lawyers’ risk and delay in receiving payment. “There is no dispute that claimant is the prevailing party within the meaning of Labor Code section 1102.5 and is entitled to recover reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs,” retired judge Jeffrey Barton wrote in his 25-page ruling. “The arbitrator considered the public policy of encouraging attorneys to take on such cases and assume the costs and expenses of prosecution and the result obtained for Ms. Warren,” he added. “Balancing these considerations, the arbitrator finds that a multiplier of 1.25 appropriately compensates plaintiffs counsel for contingent risk and delay.” SANDAG, the regional planning agency overseen by a board of elected city and county officials, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the millions of dollars in public resources the wrongful termination has cost. All of the executive staff who were in place at the $1.3 billion agency when Warren was fired have since left. Warrem attorney Josh Gruenberg said he and his client are pleased with the ruling. “We’re grateful to the arbitrator for the award of attorney fees of $1.7 million and for acknowledging the risk we took prosecuting the case and the fact that we worked on it for two years without compensation,” he said. Warrem was a career finance professional who was rehired at SANDAG in 2023. Within months, she says she learned of serious flaws in the software the agency relied on to calculate the fees charged to drivers on the toll-road section of SR-125. But she says that instead of alerting the board of directors to the glitches, her boss, chief financial officer Andre Douzdjian, fired her. Warrem filed a lawsuit later that year, alleging she was wrongfully terminated after blowing the whistle on the flawed software. Soon thereafter, SANDAG’s then-CEO Hasan Ikhrata informed the SANDAG board of directors of problems with the tolling system. The payment system wrongly assessed drivers using the 10-mile section of state Route 125 formerly known as the Southbay Expressway. By the time the issue was made public as a result of Warrem’s lawsuit, SANDAG officials said up to 45,000 accounts could have been wrongly charged before being corrected. Ikhrata retired at the end of 2023. Douzdjian and other senior officials also departed from SANDAG, which named former Caltrans executive Mario Orso as the new CEO in April 2024. The contractor, a company called ETAN Tolling Technology, was replaced in 2024. Warrem was awarded $2.5 million in damages late last year for lost income, future damages and emotional distress. Among the issues Barton cited in his November ruling was the fact that Warrem was unable to find a comparable job in San Diego County after her termination. He noted that she had moved to San Bernardino County for work and now visits her family on weekends. On Friday, the SANDAG executive committee considered a new whistleblower-protection policy aimed at preventing future fraud and protecting people who bring forward such concerns. The proposed policy will still need to be approved by the full board. ...read more read less