Warring Transit Agencies Prepare for Merger : Transportation: Legislature has given the RTD and LACTC a Jan. 1 deadline to create super panel. They will meet Wednesday seeking to reconcile their proposals.

Twice in the last two years, the Southern California Rapid Transit District board has voted to put its own transit police officers on the Metro Rail Blue Line. Both times, the red-faced RTD reversed itself under pressure from the powerful Los Angeles County Transportation Commission.

At the same time, the LACTC’s ambitious 30-year plan to build a $50-billion 300-mile rail rapid transit network is being assaulted, guerrilla-style, by the RTD, which fears that new train lines are coming at the expense of current and future bus service.

Such internecine infighting has preoccupied the county’s major mass transit agencies almost from the day the Legislature created the commission 15 years ago, even though the two 11-member boards have six members in common.

Today, the LACTC is responsible for spearheading construction of the massive rail network being built on and below the county’s streets. It also administers billions of dollars in local, state and federal transportation funds, including tax money earmarked for the RTD.

For its part, the RTD is responsible for actually operating the district’s 2,500 buses and the year-old Metro Rail Blue Line between Long Beach and Los Angeles.

Both agencies acknowledge that their rivalry has wasted money, duplicated a lot of work and delayed service improvements. But like two squabbling siblings, each blames the other for the problem.

The Legislature has had enough. Led by Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), it has commanded the warring bureaucracies to decide by Jan. 1 how to merge into one super agency.

It is a dizzyingly, difficult request, one that will affect issues as narrow as the logo and paint scheme on buses and trains, as costly as union contracts and pension plans, and as broad as the future of public transit just as it is becoming an important factor in shaping where people will live and work.

After months of studying dozens of options, the two boards are scheduled to meet jointly Wednesday to reconcile their sharply different competing proposals.

Although both agencies are supposed to provide public transit, they do not always share the same interests.

That point was drawn most clearly earlier this month, when the LACTC announced that it faces a $133-million budget shortfall this year because the recession has reduced its primary source of funds, a half-cent sales tax surcharge.

The commission said it would make up the bulk of the shortfall by trimming bus operating subsidies given to the RTD and other operators, a decision that may force the RTD to reduce service or raise fares. The LACTC said it would not scale back construction of rail lines, arguing that would increase costs and increase the county’s high unemployment rate.

The budget crunch has intensified the interagency rivalry even as the LACTC and RTD are negotiating to merge. The two have even made a point of recommending different names for the combined agency, with the RTD favoring a county “transit authority” with a new “TA” logo and the LACTC advocating a “metropolitan” commission that would adopt its existing “Metro” logo.

Meanwhile, in the political trenches, the LACTC has released letters from local companies complaining about RTD bus service and calling for other options--presumably LACTC’s train plan. The LACTC also floated a story to a local wire service falsely asserting that the RTD had already agreed to LACTC’s merger plan.

At the same time, the RTD has released a survey saying that a wide majority of local businesses want more bus service now, a charge that undermines the LACTC’s emphasis on building rail lines for the future. In letters to local employers, the RTD also accused the LACTC of slashing bus service, which the RTD said would make it hard for companies to comply with strict anti-pollution laws.

The RTD also is compiling an analysis of the LACTC’s salary structure, a draft copy of which indicates that the commission pays its employees far more than the RTD--a charge that could come in handy when arguing over which agency has more fat in its budget and which should place more staff in the combined, slimmed-down super agency.

Despite all the infighting, current LACTC Executive Director Neil Peterson said he expects the two agencies to reach a consensus Wednesday and forward a single proposal to the Legislature.

“I think people have had enough,” he said. “I think people want to deal with this and get on with business.”

So far, the two agencies have only been able to agree on a combined board of directors to set policy for new planning, construction and operating divisions. They are still sharply split on how the board will exercise its power.

A proposal by the LACTC calls for a powerful appointed chief executive who would be able to hire and fire division managers at will, sign contracts, adjudicate contract disputes, condemn private property and even set fares.

RTD officials suspect that this structure would give more power to Peterson, the current LACTC chief, making it more likely, as RTD board member Richard Alatorre said at one recent meeting, that “rail is going to be the whole ballgame and it is going to come at the expense of the bus system.”

The RTD has drafted a proposal calling for most power to be held by the new combined board of directors, which would retain direct control over contracts, condemnations and personnel.

“Given the staggering amount of money (being spent on transit)--and there is no doubt that this new agency will be the biggest checkbook in Los Angeles--it is essential that the system have sufficient checks and balances,” said RTD board President Marvin L. Holen.

Giving a chief executive the power to hire and fire everyone in the agency gives too much power to one person, Holen said. He is worried that employees who owe their jobs to that person would be reluctant to challenge decisions that they believe are unwise or unethical.

Under the LACTC proposal, he added, “the opportunity (for a powerful chief executive) to manipulate information and manipulate the checkbook is much too large to be comfortable for the public.”

Peterson dismissed such concerns.

“The issue of the chief executive officer is not power,” he said. “It is a matter of clear lines of authority. . . . How can you hold someone accountable and not let him hire his own top staff people?”

The law mandating the merger required that the new combined agency not only resolve institutional conflicts, but also improve accountability. In the past, the division of responsibility between the agencies and widespread delegation of authority within each has made it difficult to determine responsibility for construction delays, cost overruns and corruption.

The RTD wants to do this by creating a strong board of directors that would oversee a legally defined set of divisions--one to plan where to add rail lines, car-pool lanes, bus routes and other services, another to build the rail line and a third to actually run the buses and trains.

The LACTC wants the Legislature to simply create a joint policy board, one that is virtually identical to the current LACTC board, and let it alone decide how the new super agency will be organized. A powerful chief executive would play a key role in creating the agency structure.

In the past, accountability has been hampered because the elected officials who sit on the agencies’ boards--county supervisors, mayors and council members--usually delegate their oversight and voting authority to alternates, most often close aides or political supporters.

This frees the already overcommitted elected officials from having to read reams of reports and sit through hours of meetings each week. But the use of alternates also insulates the officials from responsibility for politically unpopular or legally suspect decisions.

Both the RTD and LACTC reorganization proposals would allow continued use of alternates on the new board of directors.

When the RTD was created by the Legislature in 1964 to consolidate a hodgepodge of failing bus lines, the agency became the region’s supreme public transit provider. But since then, its empire has consistently shrunk.

Municipally operated bus lines in Long Beach, Santa Monica, Montebello and elsewhere deny it a monopoly on bus lines in the county, and the creation of the LACTC in 1976 cracked its grip on rail rapid transit just as the county was getting serious about building it.

The LACTC has grown from five to 500 employees, assuming the job of parceling out local, state and federal transit funds. In 1988, county officials arranged for the LACTC to take over Metro Rail construction from the RTD because the district was busy defending itself against allegations of incompetence in subway construction and corruption in bus operations.

The RTD was left running buses, which are and will continue to be the backbone of public transit in the county--but which also are less glamorous and get less attention than the subways and trolley lines being built by the LACTC.

“The responsibilities of the LACTC were never clearly defined, and so there has been an absolutely repeated effort to take over the RTD,” said RTD board member Gordana Swanson of Rolling Hills. “The RTD and municipal (bus) operators . . . are always going hat-in-hand to the commission for operating money that is legally theirs in the first place, and they’re always living in fear of being cut off if they don’t do what the LACTC wants.”