U.S. Official Retires Amid Freeway Repair Grumbling : Bureaucracy: Federal highway administrator may be a casualty of the state’s handling of post-quake projects.

California’s top federal highway administrator has abruptly taken early retirement, the first apparent casualty of the Clinton Administration’s unhappiness with the state’s handling of the federally financed rebuilding of the quake-damaged freeways.

Roger E. Borg, 55, quietly stepped down earlier this month as the California director of the Federal Highway Administration, after his superiors expressed dissatisfaction with his oversight of the state’s reconstruction of vital Los Angeles freeways damaged in the Northridge earthquake. The reconstruction has been a joint federal-state project, with the state directing the work and the federal government providing all the financing.

Borg said in an interview Tuesday that he had been considering retirement but decided to end his 29-year career after Washington officials criticized him for being unaware of the state’s dramatically accelerated schedule for reopening of the Santa Monica Freeway.

Calling the Washington reaction a “disappointment,” Borg said the criticism had come at a time when he thought top officials should instead be praising his staff for their round-the-clock efforts to rebuild the freeway. “I was thinking we should be sitting here celebrating and we were not,” he said.

While Los Angeles hailed the speedy restoration of the Santa Monica Freeway, delivered 69 days ahead of schedule, Borg’s handling of the contracting and reconstruction work came under fire within the agency.

Top U.S. transportation officials confirmed that Borg and his staff had been questioned about several issues, including why they had allowed the state to mislead them on the date the Santa Monica would open to traffic and to grossly overestimate the costs of the rebuilding effort. Initial estimates of $1.3 billion were cut by $547 million earlier this month.

The officials said they also were upset that they had to learn from a Times report that the two newly constructed bridges on the Santa Monica would need seismic strengthening at the abutments to prevent the freeway’s closure in a major earthquake.

“It was his (Borg’s) general oversight of the reconstruction project, and the fact that we didn’t have any information about the seismic retrofit issues, that the estimates for the highways were grossly overstated, that the construction schedules were not really on the mark,” said a federal transportation official who requested anonymity.

Borg said it was unfair that he was criticized for the initial inflated estimates because he was in Central America on vacation when they were calculated. When he returned, he said, the estimates already had been forwarded to Congress for funding.

The internal criticisms, Borg said, also focused unfairly on relatively minor issues.

“We were working to restore service. We were working to serve the people of Los Angeles,” he said.

His direct supervisor, Regional Federal Highway Administrator Tom Ptak, said that Borg had asked approval to take early retirement a few days after the reopening of the Santa Monica, and it was granted.

Federal highway officials who worked for Borg said he came into the office April 15, announced his retirement and left for the day. He has not returned.

As California director, Borg headed the largest division within the federal agency. From his headquarters in Sacramento, the engineer supervised a staff of 55 and oversaw the expenditure on California highways of about $2 billion a year in federal funds.

With his early retirement, effective May 1, Borg gives up a $105,556 annual salary and the opportunity to collect his maximum pension. His supervisors said they had not yet calculated his pension.

Both the Wilson Administration and the Clinton Administration have sought to take credit for the early reopening of the heavily traveled Santa Monica Freeway. Less than three months after two of its bridges collapsed in the Jan. 17 earthquake, construction was completed on replacement structures and the world’s busiest freeway was reopened.

To the chagrin of the Democratic Administration in Washington, however, Republican Gov. Pete Wilson was the one who basked most in the glory. One day after state officials advised a U.S. Senate hearing that construction on the bridges would not be completed for another month, Wilson made headlines by announcing that the freeway would in fact be opened in just a week.

Wilson scheduled the formal opening for 10 a.m. on April 12 and Vice President Al Gore announced that he would attend. But then with only two hours notice, an informal opening of the freeway--with Wilson presiding--was staged the night before.

Federal officials were stung. “We felt we had been working fairly well in partnership with the state and the city. Then for this to get sprung was certainly a violation of all we worked toward,” said Richard Minz, an assistant to Transportation Secretary Federico Pena.

Some of the criticism was directed at Borg.

Federal Highway Administrator Rodney Slater had not asked Borg to retire but Slater had “aggressively sought” to find out why he had not been better informed about the retrofitting of the new bridges and the opening of the Santa Monica, according to one transportation official.

Ptak said he, too, had told Borg of his displeasure over the way the opening of the freeway had been handled.

“Was I disappointed that we didn’t have better information on some of the opening dates? That is correct,” said Ptak. “And did I discuss this with Roger? That is correct.”

Borg said he had been as surprised as everyone else by the announcement. “We had no information whatsoever to refute (what was said at the hearing),” he said. “Our folks had been on the construction job, had talked with the resident engineer, had inspected the works and we had no basis to say it was going to be done any quicker that that.”

Dean Dunphy, Wilson’s secretary for business, transportation and housing, said the suddenness of the retirement was bewildering to state officials.

“He rather suddenly retired after having done what the vice president and others said was a magnificent job of opening the freeway early,” said Dunphy. “So it certainly caused some questions as to whether or not he retired on his own.”

At the informal opening of the Santa Monica, federal officials were further embarrassed when reporters asked for comments on a Times story reporting that the newly finished bridges would have to be retrofitted because of a seismic weakness at the abutments. Not having been briefed, Pena said erroneously that the abutments did not need to be retrofitted.

This came on the heels of another surprise. Dunphy had announced that Caltrans had overestimated the cost of reconstructing the quake-damaged freeways. After closer review, he said the initial cost estimates of $1.3 billion were being reduced by $547 million.

Angry federal officials pointed out that eight states during last summer’s Midwest floods were able to provide better estimates of damage than Caltrans did in assessing its losses.

“There are issues of accountability,” one official explained. “When we go to Congress and say we need $1.3 billion to reconstruct freeways, they trust us--and so do the American people--that the number is going to be fairly accurate.”

Dunphy defended Caltrans’ action, saying that in order for Congress to take emergency action costs had to be estimated before there was time for a thorough inspection of the freeway damage. After site visits, he said, officials were able to determine that many of the damaged bridges first thought to need replacement would need only repairs.

As for the opening of the freeway, he insisted that Wilson was not trying to preempt federal officials. He said the governor did not want to announce the reopening until inspectors could definitely confirm from a walk-through of the construction site that the bridges would, indeed, be completed by April 12.

He said that walk-through was not conducted until the day Wilson announced the reopening.

Although formal ceremonies were scheduled for April 12, he said the contractor had been directed to push the work as fast as he could. It was determined, he said, that traffic would be allowed on the freeway whenever that work was finished.

“My specific direction coming from the governor was to open that freeway as soon as it could possibly be opened and not wait for a ceremonial event, a ribbon cutting on the freeway,” said Dunphy. “Our challenge was not to stage events but was to get that freeway finished.”