Warning on RTD Problem Belittled, Documents Show

Months before reports leaked out this year about missing bus parts and major inventory control lapses at the Southern California Rapid Transit District, a top-level transit district manager belittled--and some sources say tried to squash--a detailed study of the problems by a team of the RTD’s own supervisors.

Documents obtained by The Times show that RTD Assistant General Manager John Richeson, General Manager John Dyer’s right-hand man whose duties include overseeing the bus system’s $20-million-plus warehouse inventory, sharply rebuked the lower-level managers for their September, 1986, report.

Among its findings was that top-level district management was not giving enough attention to managing district inventory, that a serious shortage of parts was affecting the ability to keep buses on the streets, that the unaccounted-for parts were piling up and that parts were not being properly tracked outside of warehouses and stockrooms.

Some of those same problems have more recently come to light in news media reports and audits of the troubled inventory system. Investigations of missing parts began last March after The Times reported that the RTD had created, in effect, a “phantom warehouse”--a dummy location existing only in district computers where more $1.2 million in lost or stolen parts were being “stored” rather than being written off.

Six months earlier, however, after completion of the internal review--prepared as part of a program designed to improve RTD management communications--Richeson wrote a stinging response to the authors.

“At best (the report) regrettably resembles yellow-journalistic mudslinging,” Richeson wrote. After disputing several key areas of the staff report, Richeson, a powerful executive who oversees the district personnel and budget departments, wrote that the report was not particularly constructive and that he hoped that his remarks would “assist your group in refocusing its perspective.”

Some RTD sources familiar with the inventory problems said the 1986 report had negligible impact because Richeson’s response was seen as a warning to keep silent.

Richeson strongly denies trying to squelch criticism. “I have never ever prohibited or urged people not to bring problems to me,” he said. But Richeson said he viewed the critical report as a rehash of longtime problems that was intended to undermine his efforts to improve the system.

Reorganizes System

Among those efforts was the reorganization of the warehouse system, bringing it under his supervision in 1983.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, which is conducting an investigation of stolen RTD bus parts, said it was reviewing both the 1986 study and Richeson’s response as part of its probe.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Herb Lapin, who is prosecuting several RTD employees for thefts of parts and investigating the whereabouts of more than $1 million in unaccounted-for parts, said many of the problems identified in the 1986 study have been borne out in a major new audit of inventory problems. That audit by the RTD inspector general’s office has not been released, but Lapin said he has reviewed a draft. “Based on those two documents, that mirror each other, it appears nothing has been done to correct the problems,” Lapin said.

Richeson also disputes that contention. He said that problems remain but that controls on parts showed improvement, at least until recently.

But one of the findings of the 1986 report now seems to have been prophetic. It cautioned that unless major improvements were made, a large number of buses would have to be sidelined for lack of parts when the RTD attempted to move its central repair shop to a new downtown facility. That move began several months ago and the district is facing a major parts shortage.

Some parts cannot be found, others cannot be retrieved because of start-up problems in an $80-million, high-tech, automated warehouse. The number of buses out of service for lack of parts has doubled and some bus runs have been canceled as a result, Richeson conceded. An emergency order of $1 million in parts has been made to help keep buses going, he said.

Richeson said the district was not fully prepared for the move and did not allow enough time to work out problems with the new warehouse system. But he insisted that some of those responsibilities were outside of his area of control.

Still, one RTD employee familiar with the inventory problems said it is difficult to believe that the 1986 report was not taken more seriously by top-level management. “It was like predicting what would happen, and it’s all come true,” he said.