Anderson Heads House Transit Panel

Rep. Glenn M. Anderson (D-San Pedro), a veteran lawmaker and key supporter of the Los Angeles Metro Rail project, became chairman Wednesday of the House committee that controls mass transit, highway and airport programs.

“Obviously I’ll be chairman for the whole country,” Anderson said in an interview, “but I’ll be in a place where I can help make sure Southern California gets its fair share of things.”

Anderson’s elevation to the chairmanship of the Public Works and Transportation Committee had been expected since the March 25 death of former Chairman James J. Howard (D-N.J.).

In his 20-year career in the House, Anderson has been a leading advocate of expanding the federal construction projects authorized by the Public Works Committee. Critics often accuse the committee’s projects of being “pork-barrel” expenditures, but the 75-year-old Anderson staunchly defends them.

“I’ve been building all my life,” he said. “Public works pay for themselves. It’s paying people to work on a project that makes the economy better, makes the region better, makes everything better.”

Transit Experts

Highway and transit experts estimate that the country should spend “a minimum of $26 billion a year” on transportation projects, he said, more than twice the current level and more than three times the amount that President Reagan has proposed for next year.

“In our own area,” Anderson noted, “we’re going to have another 3 1/2 million people, maybe more,” by the end of the decade.

Accommodating the growth will require further expansion of the area’s highway network, as well as completion of rail-transit projects now under way, he said.

Last year Anderson shepherded through the House a bill to authorize enough funds to complete the $3.8-billion Metro Rail project. The fate of the subway now lies primarily in the hands of t1751457864bills set the actual spending level for federal programs.

Before being elected to Congress for the first time in 1968, Anderson served eight years as California’s lieutenant governor and eight years in the Assembly. In the Assembly, he wrote the legislation abolishing segregated schools.

In Congress he has generally shunned publicity, concentrating on his two committee assignments, Public Works and Merchant Marine and Fisheries. Through the Merchant Marine panel, he has steered measures to expand the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which lie largely within his district.