An Outgoing County Official : Government: Bob Braitman, who has announced his resignation, says he is sorry if his ‘zest for life’ offended some.

It was the morning after his surprise resignation, and Bob Braitman was reflecting on the seemingly embarrassing note upon which his long career in Ventura County had ended.

“I am who I am. If my zest for life has offended some people, I apologize for that.”

A sexual harassment complaint filed against Braitman, 44, executive officer of the Local Agency Formation Commission, by his senior analyst, Lynne Kada, 55, was settled and signed Wednesday.

Then, on Thursday, Braitman announced his resignation, effective in January.

On Friday, he appeared relaxed behind his desk on the fourth floor of the Ventura County Hall of Administration as he speculated on whether the highly publicized confrontation could have been avoided.

Maybe not, he said.

In effect, he said, he can’t help his personality, his roots in Brooklyn, N.Y., where Robert L. Braitman was born on Friday the 13th in December, 1946.

It’s an “in-your-face” style of bear hugs and touching when he is interacting with people.

To make his point, he walked around to the front of his desk where a reporter was sitting. He leaned over, looked his interviewer in the eye and declared:

“New Yorkers are more boisterous and direct.”

Dressed casually in a dark blue crew-neck sweater, which made him look more like a college professor than a bureaucrat who runs a powerful agency, Braitman said, “My communication style is one of friendliness.”

Touching people with whom he is communicating, he said, is part of his persona. But that particular part of his persona obviously offended Kada.

Still, Braitman contends he never touched Kada “indecently, always on a shoulder, never any sexual advances.” But even that stopped when she made known her discomfort last August, he said, and he kept his distance.

With hindsight, he said the timing of his resignation was bad.

“I should have waited,” he said. He could have distanced himself from the allegation, he said, then after an appropriate time, left his job without raising too many eyebrows.

He had been considering resigning for months anyway after more than 20 years in Ventura County government, Braitman said. But now, he said, it appears as though he was hounded out of office.

To be sure, it has been a tense month for Braitman, who has been LAFCO’s executive officer since 1974.

When, on Oct. 1, a local newspaper headline said that Braitman “pawed” Kada, his wife, Mary, became incensed and complained loudly to the paper’s editors.

Then, according to Braitman, she placed a dozen red roses in a vase and put them on her husband’s desk in his office.

“She was very angry,” Braitman recalled. “My daughter, Leah, was very angry.”

For her part, Kada, who has transferred to another county agency, won’t comment on what motivated her complaint.

Braitman said that he, along with millions of other Americans, watched with fascination the bitter debate in thS. Senate over the nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. But he said he did not identify with the debate over whether Thomas had sexually harassed law professor Anita Faye Hill.

“I have never discussed pornography with my employees or any of the other things alleged to have been done by the judge,” he said.

As for the settlement with Kada, who filed her complaint against Braitman with both the county and a state agency, he said it was fair for both sides.

“No harm, no foul,” he said in characterizing it.

But if Braitman appeared satisfied with the settlement, the days leading up to it certainly were painful, he said.

Rumors abounded of other women complaining about his behavior. Reporters received tips about supposed scandalous incidents that had become the subject of widespread gossip around the Government Center.

Braitman, too, heard the rumors.

Did he ever do anything inappropriate with a female employee? “No,” he said.

Was he hurt by the innuendo? Yes, he said, but friends and associates rallied to his side.

“You can hug me anytime,” he recalled a female friend recently telling him, a reference to Kada’s reported complaint that Braitman touched her too much during work hours.

Is he concerned about the controversy generated by the complaint? Yes, he said, “it concerns me that some people don’t get along with me as well as others.”

Is there a moral to be learned? “Try to be more sensitive to how people appear to be receiving me,” he said.

A graduate of Fresno State, where he studied political science, Braitman has been working in Ventura County government for more than two decades. During that time he has made friends and, of course, enemies.

He can be tough and abrasive, said some individuals who have dealt with him. Indeed, more than one person said in interviews that they were turned off by his style.

“He can be abrupt with individuals,” said Gerard W. Kapuscik, general manager of the Channel Islands Beach Community Services District. “And he has a locker-room sense of humor.”

Another Braitman critic is Florence B. Young, 68. In 1977, Young recalled in a recent interview, the tension became unbearable while she was working under Braitman as a LAFCO assistant. Ultimately, she took an extended sick leave.

Among her most upsetting moments, Young alleged, was when Braitman secretly tape-recorded their conversations at his desk. “It was a shock,” she said. “I felt like screaming and running out of his office.” She has since joined another county agency.

Braitman denies secretly taping anyone’s conversations and attributes Young’s complaint to the fact that she wanted his job, something Young denies.

Others were quick to give Braitman credit for being bright and dedicated to the development of orderly government in Ventura County, which is LAFCO’s mission.

“I think Bob has done a great job,” said Robert C. Embry, the LAFCO board chairman. He said he was surprised by the sexual harassment allegation.

“A lot of middle-aged men are capable of doing a lot of things,” Embry said. “But I would not have expected Bob to do that. I was surprised by the whole thing.”

And, if some view Braitman as a tough guy, he also can show a sensitive side.

Producing a blue folder containing notes and messages from friends and colleagues who have urged him to “hang in there,” he choked up for a moment while reading a note from a friend.

“This, too, shall pass,” it said.