Heckuva Way to Run Transit Board

At a time when polls suggest that most Californians view public officials with increasing disdain, a member of the Southern California Rapid Transit District board has managed to find another way to raise the level of our collective cynicism.

One of the RTD board’s 11 directors, Jan Hall, has quit the board to become a paid RTD lobbyist. Hall, with considerable help from RTD’s general manager, Alan F. Pegg, managed to maneuver around the agency’s revolving-door rule that quite properly prohibits directors for one year from turning their board influence into personal profit by working directly for the district. Hall will be working for CBC Consultants of Torrance, which has a $99,500 contract with the RTD for lobbying services. The fee primarily will cover Hall’s salary. So even though Hall will work as a lobbyist for the RTD, she took advantage of the loophole that doesn’t stop her from working for a company that lobbies for the district.

But Hall’s inventiveness did not stop there. If that contract had been for $100,000, just $500 more, it would have been subject to approval by members of the RTD board. Because it was just barely under the limit, General Manager Pegg was able to personally authorize the contract. So both rules were cleverly circumvented.

The contract raises a third question. Pegg has been saying that bus fares may have to increase by 30 cents because of proposed cuts in federal operating subsidies. How, then, can the RTD justify another lobbyist when the district already has four full-time lobbyists on staff?

RTD board member Nikolas Patsaouras is outraged about the back-door arrangement and believes the contract should come to a vote of the board. Ironically, the state’s open-meeting law that requires advance notification on board actions prevents him from bringing the matter up for a vote at today’s RTD meeting. But there is nothing to excuse the board from scheduling a vote on the contract in a future public meeting.