Mayor Vetoes Yaroslavsky Plan for Bus Fare Subsidy

With a rebuke clearly aimed at his chief rival, Mayor Tom Bradley on Tuesday vetoed an anti-traffic proposal pushed by City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, calling it a product of “political expediency . . . ill-defined and hastily conceived.”

In a seven-page response to the City Council’s recently adopted $2.9-billion budget, Bradley vetoed 15 major changes, totaling more than $27 million, to his own spending plan. Included in those vetoes were restorations of $3.5 million in cuts the council had made to make room for its own programs.

The most significant--and politically potent--veto took aim at a $17.8-million proposal by Councilmen Yaroslavsky and Nate Holden that was narrowly approved May 23 on a 9-6 vote.

In order to rescue his ill-fated plan to bring down the basic RTD bus fare by 35 cents during rush-hour periods, Yaroslavsky quickly co-authored an alternate proposal with Holden to set aside the $17.8 million that could be used for the bus fare subsidy or other purposes.

Bradley spent nearly one-third of his veto message attacking the Yaroslavsky/Holden proposal. Although he did not name Yaroslavsky, Bradley clearly dared his expected rival to resurrect the peak-hour bus fare idea, threatening to veto such a plan if it ever came before him.

Saying that he would “support enthusiastically all reasonable measures to reduce traffic congestion and improve air quality,” Bradley said that the use of the $17.8 million in Proposition A funds “for still unspecified and undefined programs is not the kind of thoughtful transportation plan that is worthy of our citizens.” Proposition A funds come from a half-cent sales tax approved by voters in 1980 specifically for transportation uses.

” . . . I cannot in good conscience permit such an ill-defined program to proceed. We simply cannot allow sound transportation policy to take a back seat to political expediency,” Bradley said.

Bradley said he will unveil a transportation plan of his own this morning that will involve both the public and private sectors. His office did not offer details.

An angry Yaroslavsky charged at an impromptu news conference that Bradley’s veto of the Proposition A funds was motivated by politics. He said the veto was issued partly because Yaroslavsky had sponsored it, and because the mayor feared that such a proposal would hurt the Metro Rail subway project.

‘Business as Usual’

“(The veto) is a business-as-usual message that reflects the same lack of vision that I have been arguing (about) for a long time. The Bradley Administration is clearly in support of expensive bus rides, is clearly in support of the status quo,” Yaroslavsky said.

But Bradley’s expected challenger in next year’s election said that the bus fare issue is probably dead because it failed to receive the 10 votes on the council floor necessary to override the veto.

Councilman Holden, meanwhile, said Bradley had “failed to discuss the need for affordable transportation” in his veto message. He said that something needs to be done to reduce the impact of the hike in the basic bus fare from 85 cents to $1.10 that will occur on July 1.

In another slap at Yaroslavsky, Bradley vetoed a $3.3-million appropriation the Westside councilman had sponsored for police overtime. The mayor also conspicuously neglected to give Yaroslavsky credit for finding enough funds to hire 150 more police officers than Bradley had initially proposed. The 150-officer boost, however, was approved.

At the same time, Bradley approved a $6.4-million boost in police overtime that had been authored by his allies, Richard Alatorre and Robert Farrell.

Yaroslavsky said he was “shocked” by the veto of the $3.3 million in police overtime and said it was part of a “schizophrenic law enforcement policy. . .” in which Bradley has both supported and opposed Police Department budget increases in recent years. The councilman predicted that it will be overridden when the council considers the mayor’s message in the next several days.