MTA Records Sharp Drop in Expense Sums

The days of deluxe doughnut samplers, dinners at the city’s most expensive restaurants, and catered meals at the office are over for transit officials, according to reports released by Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials.

In hopes of concluding an embarrassing chapter in transit history, MTA officials are going out of their way to show that they now run a tight ship--travel expenses, for instance, dropped 47% from $667,261 in 1991 to $350,442 in 1992. Business meals have been cut by 68%, from $170,873 in 1991 to $54,403 last year.

The Times reported last spring that the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (now part of the MTA) had freely spent at least $2.9 million during an 18-month period for travel, meals, entertainment, automobiles and staff perks.

Amid the resulting outcry, numerous politicians demanded investigations--including Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. (R-Tenn.), a member of the House Public Works and Transportation Committee, who asked the U.S. General Accounting Office in September to look into the matter.

For three days beginning Jan. 22, three GAO investigators scrutinized the Transportation Commission’s books, examining records for managing travel, vehicles, business meals, credit cards and employee relocation.

GAO investigator Tom Sipes said Friday that neither he nor others on the team can comment on the investigation.

In an interoffice memo dated April 30, Jerry Givens, executive assistant to the new MTA chief, wrote that GAO investigators said they were impressed with the more restrictive system that has been installed for greater accountability.

“The record is clear that strong and aggressive efforts have been taken to remedy the flaws in earlier financial controls,” wrote Givens, who added that the GAO is not expected to pursue the matter. “To the best of our knowledge, the GAO does not foresee taking further investigative action.”

Duncan was unavailable to comment.

“I am pleased that we are hearing good things about the quality of our efforts,” said Franklin White, the new head of the MTA, who assumed his post this spring. “I hope this will shortly be all behind us. It’s history--whatever the GAO finds, they find. I view the past as past, and I’ll worry about the future.”

According to the memo, GAO investigator Houston Fuller suggested that the agency provide separate accounting for all gasoline credit cards. Currently, the agency receives one bill monthly that lumps together the charges from about 30 credit cards--a process that makes detecting fraudulent charges virtually impossible, said Angela Spaccia, director of management services and accounting.

The GAO investigators also pointed out that the agency’s maintenance agreement files were sloppily organized and that information was sometimes missing. The team, according to the memo, was impressed with the agency’s new regulations for travel and perks.

Under current policies, doughnuts and coffee can no longer be purchased for the staff, who had noshed $6,000 worth of doughnuts during an 18-month period that ended in December, 1991. Business meals will be reimbursed only after a transit agency employee has demonstrated that the work taking place during the meal could be scheduled for no other time. And no employee can expect to be reimbursed for more than $50 in meals on one day when traveling.

A travel coordinator, hired in March, 1992, now obtains discounted air fares and hotel rates for MTA employees. Travel expenses incurred by agency executives have been dramatically reduced, in part because the number of people allowed to travel was reduced by 27%. For the 18-month period that drew so much attention last spring, agency officials had chalked up more than $719,000 as they crisscrossed the country, attending conferences and workshops.

In 1991, according to a management services report issued last month, former LACTC Executive Director Neil Peterson and Ed McSpedon, executive director of the Rail Construction Corp., each spent about $16,000 on travel. Last year, those top officials dramatically cut their travel, spending about $5,000 each.

“I think it’s important to understand that this organization went from 50 employees to more than 500 within three years,” Spaccia said. “Naturally, your ability to process information administratively breaks down.”