Lawmakers Propose Regional Transportation Panel : Transit: Orange County officials say that regional cooperation is fine but that the plan would put the county back in the position of having to kowtow to L.A. business interests.

In a move already engendering criticism from local governments, two state senators proposed legislation Monday that would empower a new regional agency to develop and enforce a transportation plan for a six-county area encompassing Orange County and the Los Angeles Basin.

Orange County officials immediately branded the plan as an attempt to scuttle local efforts to establish a countywide council of governments that would coordinate transportation and land-use decisions. They said that while they favor regional cooperation, this new proposal would make the county subservient to Los Angeles business interests.

“This runs the risk of . . . putting Orange County back in the position it was half a dozen years ago, when it was supposed to be kowtowing to whatever needs Los Angeles might have,” said state Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim).

Sens. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) and Robert Presley (D-Riverside) said their aim is to eliminate the “bureaucratic turf wars” that have contributed to traffic gridlock in Southern California by giving one agency final authority over transportation planning in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura and Imperial counties.

Under the proposal, local governments would have to conform their highway and mass transit planning to the regional plan. If they failed to do so, a newly created Southern California Metropolitan Transportation Commission would have authority to withhold fuel tax money and state bond funds.

“Traffic and related problems are driving the cost of living up and the quality of living down in Southern California,” Torres said. “Our new strategy for the future I believe reflects a growing consensus that regional problems require regional solutions.”

He conceded that while his proposal has the backing of key Senate leaders, including President Pro Tem David Roberti (D-Los Angeles) and Transportation Committee Chairman Quentin Kopp (I-San Francisco), it probably would not be popular with many local governments.

Indeed, in the Assembly, Transportation Committee Chairman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) saw the proposal as having little chance of passing the Legislature this year.

“The problem’s going to be getting a lot of the small individual government structures to give up some of their turf for the greater good,” Katz said. “Local elected officials never want to do that.”

Katz said it is important to discuss a regional solution to transportation problems in the Los Angeles area, but he said he worries that Torres’ proposal would create another layer of bureaucracy without enough authority to override local governments.

Some local government officials, on the other hand, said their concern is that it would take too much power away from cities, counties and other governments.

“It sounds awful scary to me,” said Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, chairman of the Orange County Transportation Commission. “I’m surprised it would even get this far without them (legislators) talking to us.”

For years, Orange County has skirmished with the Southern California Assn. of Governments, a regional planning agency also known as SCAG, with the result that state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) last year authored legislation that would restructure regional planning on a smaller, subregional basis, with Orange County having its own, merged transit and transportation planning agency.

However, the portion of the legislation dealing with regional restructuring was opposed, chiefly by Los Angeles, and Bergeson has put it on hold.

Bergeson said Monday that she welcomes the new attempt to resolve regional issues but added that the Torres bill has no chance of legislative approval in its current form.

While some county officials saw the Torres bill as being pro-SCAG because it would cover the same counties that make up SCAG, Bergeson was skeptical and predicted that even SCAG wouldn’t like it.

Seymour disagreed. “I think it is a save-SCAG bill,” he said.

Former Orange County Supervisor Bruce Nestande, a member of the California Transportation Commission, said passage of the Torres bill would make it impossible for Orange County to secure voter approval of a half-cent sales tax increase for transportation projects, since the new regional authority--rather than local officials answerable to the public--would set road priorities.

Ron Deaton, assistant chief legislative analyst for the Los Angeles City Council, said city officials were “very concerned” that Los Angeles would not be represented on the new commission. The proposal establishes a 12-member commission but gives only 10 members voting power. It allows the Board of Supervisors of each county to appoint one commissioner but does not give cities any authority to make appointments.

The remaining members would be appointed by the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the Southern California Assn. of Governments, the governor, the state director of transportation and the U.S. Department of Transportation. The president of the Greater Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce is an automatic member.

In Orange County, where the strongest opposition to the proposal is expected to develop, Stanley T. Oftelie, executive director of the Orange County Transportation Commission, said the bill would effectively abolish his agency by usurping some of its authority and funding sources.

“This pretty much knocks out all of the local transportation commissions,” he said.

Torres said he had hoped to quell some of the opposition from Orange County by ensuring that Los Angeles would not have “undue influence” on the new commission.

He said he believes that local governments will eventually see the value in having a regional authority with the power to mediate transportation-related disputes between local governments. He said, for example, the two warring Los Angeles transportation agencies--the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission and the RTD--would be “subordinate” to the new commission.

In the same way, he said, the new agency could prevent local governments from developing conflicting plans, such as those now being contemplated by Orange and Los Angeles counties for Interstate 5. He said Orange County proposes expanding the freeway to 12 lanes, while Los Angeles envisions it remaining at six to eight lanes.

“One street in Los Angeles County alone has 75 traffic signals in nine different cities,” Torres said. “These jurisdictions cannot coordinate traffic flow.”