A Whole Lot Riding on This One : L.A. County transit commission will be target of federal probe

The federal government is launching an inquiry into charges of fraud, waste and corruption by the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission in the Metro Rail project. With lightning speed, the commission chairman, Supervisor Mike Antonovich, denounced the probe as a “rehash of old charges, most of which have either been disproved or corrected.” One can only hope that Antonovich is right because this region has a lot riding, so to speak, on the LACTC’s shiny new rails.

Among the alleged abuses reported to the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, are LACTC expenditures totaling $2.9 million over an 18-month period for meals, travel and company cars for the commission’s 400 employees--expenses first documented by The Times earlier this year.

For its part, the commission says it began an internal review of spending practices in late 1991. An independent audit requested by Antonovich and Mayor Tom Bradley in response to the alleged abuses reported by The Times produced a set of recommendations earlier this year, nearly all of which the commission says it has now implemented.

Yet new reports of allegedly questionable spending prompted Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. (R-Tenn.) to call for a GAO probe. The federal government has already spent or obligated $1.3 billion for the Red Line, the first leg of the region’s planned subway system; an additional 50% is to come from state and local sources. Future federal spending on this line alone could total $2.5 billion, with billions more for other links in the region’s overall transit network. Congressional support for that funding could be weakened if the GAO determines that the LACTC has not improved its financial management practices.

The people of this region have waited far too long for a comprehensive, state-of-the-art set of alternatives to gridlocked freeways. As the county’s principal transportation authority, the LACTC wields enormous power over local development and politics. Even more reason, then, to ensure that the vast sums the commission administers are properly spent. We urge the GAO to move as quickly as possible.