Panel Votes to Delay Balance of Payments to Metrolink : Transportation: Commission presses rail authority for cost-cutting measures. Half of an estimated $1.9 million in costs is at issue.

Struggling to control the mushrooming costs of Metrolink, the Ventura County Transportation Commission on Friday approved a payment plan for the train service with a built-in cost-cutting strategy.

In a move that surprised Metrolink authorities, the commission agreed to pay half of the nearly $1.9-million estimated cost of service for fiscal year 1994-95 and press Metrolink to cut costs before paying the rest.

“I hate to see us give them the total amount for a full year now when there are still things that can be done to cut costs,” said Commissioner Bill Davis, a Simi Valley city councilman. “Withholding part of the money keeps the pressure on to come down on the costs.”

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Peter Hidalgo, a spokesman for the rail authority that runs Metrolink, said his agency did not receive notice of the commission’s decision until Friday afternoon.

Hidalgo said the Southern California Regional Rail Authority’s executive director, Richard Stanger, will meet with commission Executive Director Ginger Gherardi next week to discuss the commission’s action.

“This is an unusual way of adopting a funding source from one of our member agencies. No county has ever approached it in this fashion,” Hidalgo said.

“We are not able to respond appropriately because we are just now evaluating the impact this action would have not only on the service in Ventura County but also the county’s funding contribution.”

Gherardi said she did not think the commission’s action would lead Metrolink to stop running trains to Ventura County.

“I cannot conceive of it doing that,” Gherardi said. “We have fully funded six months of service, and we have every intention of paying the rest of the bill, once the budget is correct.”

Representing one of five counties that share the cost of Metrolink, the commission has repeatedly criticized the rail authority’s annual budget.

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In early budget negotiations, Ventura commission members helped shave about $4.5 million from the overall Metrolink budget for the five-county region. The Metrolink budget now stands at about $50 million.

The other counties served by the train are Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino.

Gherardi told the commission she came up with the plan to withhold the funds after she discovered that the rail authority may have overestimated the cost of insurance and failed to include interest it had earned on one of its accounts in the budget it approved in June.

“They said they would adjust these things mid-year,” Gherardi said. “There’s no reason for us to pay an amount now that may come down by midyear.”

The commission has joined with agencies from several other counties in asking for an outside audit of the rail authority.

“I really am disturbed that we seem to be having so much trouble getting financial information from those folks,” said Commission Chairwoman Vicky Howard, a county supervisor. “We really need to look at this carefully.”

Earlier this year, the commission learned that Ventura County’s annual share of the Metrolink cost would double, from $800,000 to nearly $1.6 million, just for service to Moorpark and Simi Valley.

The cost of service to the stations in Camarillo and Oxnard is being paid in large part with federal emergency funds because the facilities were opened to help relieve freeway congestion after the Jan. 17 earthquake.

Those funds run out at the end of September, and the rail authority has agreed to continue running the trains to the two stations until next summer as a trial expansion project, charging about $300,000 for fuel.