Try, Try Again

For what seem to be several wrong reasons, Gov. George Deukmejian did the right thing when he vetoed a measure to create an agency to plan and run public transportation in Los Angeles County. The veto means a chance to start over and get it right.

The county desperately needs a consolidated transportation agency staffed with the best people that it can find. The growth that seems inevitable over the next few decades, in fact, makes a smooth-running and coordinated network that can move people and goods at better than stop-and-go speeds a matter of urban life-and-death.

But the attempt by Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda) to create a Metropolitan Transportation Authority turned, through no particular fault of his own, into a political circus that churned out, by the narrowest margin, a bill 20 times amended and never completely acceptable to some groups that could make or break a new agency. More careful thought goes into changing a flat tire on a bus than seems to have gone into the transportation bill.

If the governor sought outside counsel on the bill, he did so very quietly. His opposition seemed to stem largely from loyalty to Republicans in the Legislature who opposed the measure because in their view it treated labor unions too tenderly and set overly ambitious goals for hiring women and members of minorities.

No law that involves so many powerful groups with a stake in the outcome can, or should, be put together in the abstract world inhabited by systems analysts and long-range planners. Business people, cities, the Southern California Rapid Transit District, labor, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, contractors, politicians and, last but not least, commuters all had an interest in the outcome of the Katz bill. Once the circus began, it was hard to tell whether planners and commuters were involved at all or whether they had been jettisoned in the interest of political aggrandizement. The real goals were so blurred, in fact, that some legislators voted for the Katz bill more as a favor to the sponsor than in a belief that it would solve transportation problems--or even be of much help.

Among the disappointed supporters of the bill is Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley; he must be central in a fresh start at getting the interest groups all pointed in the same direction--one that points toward more than drawing new lines on an organization chart. The governor must get aboard early as well. Too much is at stake here to allow the concept of a smooth-running transportation agency to be turned into another circus.