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Divided RTD Struggles to Keep Panel From Taking Over Metro Rail : Transit: Directors pass two conflicting proposals. But the Transportation Commission head isn’t satisfied.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

A badly divided Southern California Rapid Transit District board of directors Thursday tried to patch together its own plans to let the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission share in the construction of the $3.7-billion Metro Rail project.

The commission--which oversees and funds all rail construction in the county and controls the Metro Rail purse strings--has warned RTD directors that it intends to take over the mammoth construction project if a compromise is not worked out that would give the commission closer control over cost overruns.

In a meeting that bogged down in a confusing array of questions and conflicting amendments, the RTD board rejected a compromise motion put forward by board member Nick Patsaouras and then voted 6 to 5 to authorize two mutually exclusive proposals, which were meaningless without approval of the Transportation Commission.

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And both plans were flatly rejected by commission Chairwoman Christine E. Reed who, in a statement released late Thursday, said the RTD proposals “are a complete rejection” of the commission’s efforts to reach some kind of compromise in the ongoing feud between the two giant transit agencies.

Reed said she will order the commission staff to immediately start steps to take over the project.

The 17-mile-long Metro Rail subway now being tunneled under the city’s center is the biggest, most costly project of its kind undertaken in the world in recent decades. It will link Union Station downtown with Hollywood and North Hollywood. The federal government is funding half of the multibillion-dollar project.

The $1.3-billion first phase--extending 4.4 miles from Union Station to MacArthur Park--is being built by the RTD. It is already over budget and two years behind schedule, according to a commission audit.

The RTD also has a contract agreement with the commission to build the second 6.8-mile phase of the project extending the line out to Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, at a cost of $1.4 billion. The commission claims the RTD has let project costs spiral out of control and, as a result, it has announced that it plans to take “more direct control” over building the extension.

If the tunneling and construction go over budget, as now seems the case, the commission and the city of Los Angeles must pick up the tab for the cost overruns.

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Neither the federal Urban Mass Transit Administration--which is funding half the project--nor the RTD are obligated to pay for any excess costs, commission officials point out.

To get more cost control, the commission proposed that the two big transit agencies share project control by turning construction over to the Rail Construction Corp., a nonprofit subsidiary created by the commission.

The commission offered the RTD three of the six seats on the corporation’s board of directors. When the RTD declined the offer, the commission last month announced it was canceling the contract with the RTD for the design of the second phase. That cancellation notice touched off a flurry of behind-the-scenes negotiations in an effort to head off the final expulsion of the RTD from the project.

Patsaouras, backed by Mayor Tom Bradley and County Supervisor Pete Schabarum, came up with a compromise that the commission signaled it could accept. He proposed that the six members of the Rail Construction Corp. board--selected by the two agencies, three from each--be joined by a seventh, tie-breaking member to be picked by Bradley.

When Schabarum objected, the compromise was altered so that the six standing board members would pick the seventh member.

RTD Board President Gordana Swanson opposed the compromise, contending that the construction corporation was nothing but a subsidiary of the commission and a front to seize control of the Metro Rail project, which RTD had pioneered.

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Both sides contended that they had the support of the federal Urban Mass Transit Administration. But officials of that agency said this was not so and added that the issues had to be settled locally, before more federal funds would be provided.

Going into Thursday’s meeting, Patsaouras and his backers thought they had the necessary six votes. But the deal quickly unraveled when Swanson pulled out her own compromise plan. The RTD board president proposed that the commission and the RTD sign a new construction agreement that would allow the district to retain exclusive control over construction, but give the commission more latitude in overseeing the project.

That proposal, put on the agenda ahead of the Patsaouras compromise, passed by a 6-5 vote. The board next rejected the Patsaouras compromise by tacking on several amendments that created a confusing array of new boards and task forces, each designed to spy on the others and on the commission. After that 6-5 vote was taken, even some of the board members could not explain what they had done.

“It doesn’t matter anyway. The commission will reject all of this,” said Jeff Jenkins, a Schabarum appointee. “They (commissioners) are going to take over Metro Rail.”

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