RTD Compromise Is a Lesson in Power for L.A. 2000

There is usually not much room for irony amid the sewers, buses, garbage collections and the rest of the gritty work of local government. At City Hall, things are simple: If the garbage is not picked up, telephones will ring furiously with complaints.

But there was irony aplenty in the past two weeks in Los Angeles City Hall, in the County Hall of Administration up the hill and in other places where decisions are made.

While an influential civic group, the Los Angeles 2000 Committee, was urging regional cooperation to manage growth and improve the environment in the Los Angeles Basin, local politicians engaged in a bitter and, to some critics, senseless feud over running public transportation on a regional basis.

In the end, the transit dispute was settled Thursday and Friday in a stark display of political power by two of the area’s top leaders, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and County Supervisor Pete Schabarum. They, along with advisers, dictated the terms of a solution that won quick approval of the governing boards of the two agencies, the Southern California Rapid Transit District and the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission.

In the view of local leaders close to the transit dispute, it offered a revealing lesson to the Los Angeles 2000 Committee, now energetically trying to sell the community on its proposed regional agencies to improve the management of growth and the environment.

To them, it showed in a nutshell the difficulties of creating regional governing bodies in a vast area where the old frontier motto of “home rule” still has political magic. They said it also showed that it takes political power, stimulated by grass-roots protests, to make things work.

“Regional government is a notion which might be good in the ivory tower of planning group, and I support the idea, but I do not see regional government being created because I do not see local political leaders giving up their power,” said Kathleen Brown, a Los Angeles public works commissioner and Los Angeles 2000 Committee member. “The test will be for them to reach agreement as such disparate individuals as Bradley and Schabarum did this week.”

“A lot of people are thinking that the implementation is harder than the concept, “ said Richard J. Riordan, a prominent attorney close to both Schabarum and the mayor who helped negotiate the transit solution.

For decades, government study groups and political scientists have said that the only way the basin can solve its problems of air and water pollution, traffic, waste disposal and water supply is through regional solutions.

To provide water, the counties of Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside and San Diego, which is outside the geographical boundaries of the basin, got together many years ago.

They created the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which brings in water from the Colorado River and Northern California. The water district was popular with most local politicians because it supplied a needed commodity while not infringing on their power.

The area, however, resisted regional agencies that could deprive local politicians of power by giving orders to county and city governments. A move to create a regional government for Southern California was proposed in the Legislature in the 1960s but was drastically weakened. It survives today as the Southern California Assn. of Governments, a planning agency.

There is only one governmental agency that has the power to make binding regional decisions, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, and it is under heavy attack from business and political leaders who oppose its tough anti-pollution proposals.

Public transit has been a graphic illustration of the difficulties of agreeing on regional solutions.

Legislative Option

As privately owned bus service deteriorated in the basin, the Legislature, the only body that can create regional agencies, approved a Metropolitan Transit Authority to run the buses. When it failed, the Legislature created the RTD, which runs buses to points as far away as San Bernardino County and is building the Metro Rail subway in Los Angeles.

Local critics of the RTD, complaining it wasted money, persuaded the Legislature to set up another agency, the transportation commission, which controls the large amount of tax dollars available to public transit in the county. It allocates money to the RTD and smaller bus lines and is building a trolley line between Los Angeles and Long Beach.

“There was inherent conflict between the agencies, and that brings about controversy between the two,” said Ray Remy, president of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, a member of the transportation commission and one of the negotiators in the transit agency dispute.

That inherent conflict led to the current dispute and it involved many of the ideological, political and regional factors that will hamper Los Angeles 2000 Committee planners.

Geographically, Schabarum wanted an independent transit district for the San Gabriel Valley part of his district. Ideologically, Schabarum, president of the transportation commission, and other commission members believed that the RTD had been too generous in signing contracts with unions. Politically, governing boards of both transit agencies were reluctant to give up power.

Powerful Intervention

The solution to the dispute, however, is viewed by some political leaders as an indication of how regional problems can be solved--through the intervention of powerful political leaders reacting to grass-roots pressure.

Pressure was growing. The RTD threatened to reduce bus service by 50% if the commission did not free tax dollars it had been withholding from the district. Although there were no mobs of public protesters at meetings, those who showed up made convincing and poignant cases of how a bus service reduction would hurt them. Particularly affecting were disabled, who testified from wheel chairs.

The day before the RTD board meeting Thursday, Riordan made a move. His law firm represents both the transportation commission and the new Schabarum-backed San Gabriel Valley transit district. Although he is a Republican, he is close to Democrat Bradley, as an adviser and as a member of the Recreation and Parks Commission. He is a skilled negotiator whose credits include helping settle a long fight and win approval of a contract with a management firm to run the troubled Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

“I asked Pete (Schabarum) if I could contact the mayor,” Riordan said. “I called up (Deputy Mayor) Mike Gage, and he called the mayor (who was attending a National League of Cities meeting in Boston) and he said fine. So we arranged a meeting with Gage, (Schabarum aide Mike) Lewis and Bill Bicker (Bradley’s transportation adviser).”

Lobbied for Votes

By the time the RTD convened, they had agreed on a compromise. Bradley lobbied for votes among his appointees to the RTD board and even among members he had not appointed. Schabarum contacted his allies. The compromise passed the RTD board 7 to 4 and was overwhelmingly approved by the commission the next day.

“It shows that when the glare of publicity as well as public pressure was brought to bear on them, both sides were forced to make a deal,” said Mary D. Nichols, a Los Angeles 2000 Committee member and a city Recreation and Parks commissioner. “That illustrates the point we made in (the LA 2000) report about accountability:

“Nobody with power wants to give it up, but when the public focuses on a problem, it focuses wrath on everybody, not caring whether they work for the city and the county. It was the fear of wrath that brought them to the table.”