LACTC to Cover Half of RTD’s Shortfall : Transit: Compromise forestalls hike in bus fares and cuts in service. Review of both agencies’ budgets is planned.

Bus riders were at least temporarily spared higher fares and reduced services when county transit officials agreed Wednesday to cover about half of the Southern California Rapid Transit District’s $117.4-million budget shortfall and seek new ways to close the rest of the gap.

The agreement resulted from a compromise proposed by Mayor Tom Bradley and passed unanimously by the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission board. It calls for a team of outside accountants to scour the budgets of the RTD and LACTC for savings to keep buses running without using more Proposition C transit tax funds.

RTD officials had sought to make up their whole shortfall with Proposition C funds, but the county commission said the money already was earmarked for such transportation projects as new train lines, expanded services for handicapped riders--and, ironically, more bus service on county streets.

Bradley’s compromise immediately gives the district $58.2 million, which the LACTC has said it can spare without eliminating too many other programs. The mayor’s plan offers to make up the remainder of the gap, but only after a thorough audit of both agencies’ budgets.

A team of outside experts, which erased a smaller RTD deficit last year in a similar fashion, is scheduled to report back in September on how to wipe out the rest of this year’s shortfall. The RTD said plans for fare increases and budget cuts will be put off until then.

“This is a responsible approach, a compassionate approach,” said LACTC board member Gerry Hertzberg in praising Bradley’s proposal.

“We can’t sacrifice a (bus) system that is up and running and carrying more than a million people a day for some rail system in the future,” said Supervisor Ed Edelman, another member of the LACTC board. “We can’t sacrifice one for the other. We need both.”

Proposition C, narrowly approved by voters in 1990, added another half-cent transit-related sales tax surcharge in Los Angeles County. The first surcharge, approved in 1980, has financed the Blue Line trolley, a soon-to-open Red Line subway and other projects.

The $350 million that Proposition C raises each year is to be used “to fund improved frequency, speed and reliability of rail and bus service.” But Proposition C revenue had been tied up until last month, when the state Supreme Court ruled that the tax is legal.

At issue was whether the taxes raised had to be used only to offer more transit services or could be used to maintain existing services. The RTD said it needs a large share of the newly available money to avoid fare hikes and service cuts because the recession has shrunk subsidies while fare revenue fell and insurance rates rocketed.

Bradley’s compromise may have consequences. The LACTC had planned to sell a series of bonds soon, using Proposition C revenue to pay them off. That bond sale may be delayed, a development that could dry up cash for rail projects next summer.

That may dismay the mayors and council members of the county’s smaller cities, who make up the biggest advocates of the hundreds of miles of new rail transit lines envisioned in the LACTC’s 30-year plan. But it meant little to RTD supporters, who noted that the current bus system is the only option for hundreds of thousands of the city’s poor, handicapped and working-class citizens.

“When we talk about subsidizing Metrolink (commuter-rail) passengers . . . we don’t bat an eye,” said Antonio Villaraigosa, a teachers’ union officials and member of the RTD board of directors. “But when we subsidize poor people, when we subsidize the inner city, we act as if we’re doing something new.”

LACTC board member Jacki Bacharach, responding to a suggestion that cities have no right to dictate Proposition C spending because they generally did not support the tax measure, sought to defuse the suburbs vs. city argument.

“We are not hearing cities say that they don’t want to give to the RTD,” she said. “They use it . . . and they appreciate it. But they’re being asked to tighten their belts because of the economy, and they want all other jurisdictions to do the same.”

In other action Wednesday, the LACTC approved a proposal by board member Nikolas Patsaouras to encourage contractors to train unemployed young people in an apprenticeship-style program that also will discourage students from dropping out of school.

The LACTC also awarded the Mass Electric Construction Co. a $10-million contract for safety communications on the Green Line. That award has been protested by HSQ Technology of South San Francisco, which bid $6 million. HSQ installed a similar system on the Blue Line but LACTC staff said its Green Line proposal was technically deficient and refused to consider it.

The commission also approved another $527,430 to battle a stubborn problem with water leaks in the Red Line subway. The money will be used to test composite liners in the subway’s second leg. Leaking plastic liners in the first segment are safe, LACTC officials said, although they may not block potentially explosive gases as planned.