Transportation Boards Join in Merger Today : Government: For the first time, one agency will coordinate both highway and mass transit decisions.

Today the OCTD and OCTC do a disappearing act and reemerge as the new and hopefully improved OCTA.

While the change sounds like little more than a bureaucratic shake-up in the murky alphabet soup of transportation agencies, the merger of Orange County’s Transportation Commission and transit district creates a single, more powerful entity to oversee $500 million a year in traffic improvements and set priorities affecting commuters for decades to come.

For the first time, one agency will coordinate both highway and mass transit decisions. And cities will have greater influence on county transportation policy, which carries the potential for internal divisiveness and greater emphasis on local road projects rather than regional projects.

The new, 11-member Orange County Transportation Authority will decide, for example, when to build a proposed six-city rail system, and whether that service will utilize monorail technology. The panel will also determine whether remodeling the Santa Ana-San Diego freeway interchange in Irvine will occur before the Costa Mesa Freeway is widened through Orange.

“The biggest decision this new board will have to face is setting the priorities for Measure M,” said Stanley T. Oftelie, Transportation Commission executive director. “The projects were already spelled out in Measure M, so the decisions are about which projects go first.”

At the neighborhood level, the new super-agency could deny street improvement funds to any city that doesn’t comply with strict state and county growth management rules. Those rules are intended to restrict new development at heavily congested intersections.

The move to merge the transit district and Transportation Commission began several years ago as an attempt to improve accountability. And the planned merger was used by city and county officials to woo public support for Measure M, the half-cent sales tax approved by voters in 1990 to fund transportation projects. Public opinion surveys showed that voters were more likely to vote for the tax if they felt government could be held strictly accountable for spending of Measure M money.

At least until key project decisions begin having an impact on traffic, the average commuter may not notice the merger at all.

But some faces will change, creating internal divisions on the new board and new priorities. Transportation Commission and transit district members used to speak mostly with one voice. But the Transportation Authority comes into existence fraught with potential for political fractiousness.

The cities and the county supervisors feuded for several years over the composition of the new board. Finally, the supervisors agreed on a formula that gives the cities six seats on the Transportation Authority board and the supervisors four, with the first 10 members then choosing someone to represent the public at large.

Previously, membership was split evenly, with the public member serving as the potential deciding vote.

Meanwhile, the cities and the county argued over the growth management rules contained in Measure M and the amount of money the county wanted from Measure M for mass transit.

The cities resisted the growth rules even after political experts explained that Measure M would not pass without them. A compromise was reached and the supervisors agreed to increase the amount of Measure M money that would be earmarked for city street projects at transit’s expense.

Disagreements don’t stop there. City council members and a small group of city managers began attacking Oftelie’s leadership and that of Commission Chairman Dana W. Reed, the agency’s at-large, public member.

City delegates now say they will launch a nationwide recruitment effort to find an executive director. Oftelie plans to apply.

And last week, the League of Cities instructed its six delegates to the Transportation Authority to vote as a bloc for former Villa Park Mayor Carol Kawanami as the new board’s public member. This virtually signalled defeat for Reed, who is supported by county supervisors, and Chapman College President James Doti.

County supervisors were so angry by the league’s action that some talked briefly and privately about not signing the final documents today that are needed to consummate the creation of the new board.

Still, both sides agree that even if they can’t get along for a while, the merger is inevitable because it’s in taxpayers’ interest.

“I like it because I think there will be some equity for both large and small cities,” said Irvine Mayor Sally Ann Sheridan, first vice president of the League of Cities, which named six city delegates to the Transportation Authority board.

Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, a former Fountain Valley mayor who has served on both the transit district and Transportation Commission boards, supports the merger.

The six city delegates are Santa Ana Mayor Daniel H. Young and councilmen Irv Pickler of Anaheim, Richard B. Edgar of Tustin, Robert P. Wahlstrom of Los Alamitos, Gary L. Hausdorfer of San Juan Capistrano and William D. Mahoney of La Habra.

The four county representatives are supervisors Stanton, Harriett M. Wieder, Don R. Roth, and Thomas F. Riley.