In Driver’s Seat, Zarian Has Big MTA Plans : Transit: Glendale councilman takes the reins of powerful agency.

Larry Zarian has high hopes for the troubled Metropolitan Transportation Authority: hopes of regaining the public trust, of exorcising provincial politics from the MTA’s decisions, of pushing the cash-strapped agency from the red to the black.

By all accounts, the longtime Glendale city councilman, who inherited the MTA chairmanship Saturday, has the energy and ambition to try to accomplish the monumental task he has laid out for himself. Supporters, colleagues and even detractors describe him as highly motivated and dedicated, a savvy deal-maker comfortable in both the front and back rooms.

But as he steps into one of Los Angeles County’s most powerful posts, Zarian, 57, also brings a political and personal history that includes recent accusations of mismanagement and misrepresentation--the very criticisms that dog the agency he is trying to reinvent.

Two lawsuits over property he owns have cast a cloud over Zarian’s business dealings. Allegations that he lied about his educational background have stung his reputation. And some observers question whether Zarian will command the respect of his colleagues, many of whom come to the MTA board with electoral mandates and spheres of influence that dwarf his own.

“If Larry shows that he can do the job, that he can talk to his colleagues in a way they can understand and that shows he’s responsive to their concerns, I think they’ll respect him,” said Donald Camph, a transportation policy consultant from Culver City.

“But whether Larry can [turn the MTA around] by himself, well, to be honest, I’m not sure Superman can do it by himself. It can be done, but he’ll need a lot of help.”

Others are less charitable.

“He was a nothing, a Glendale city councilperson, and now he’s king of L. A. transit,” said one skeptical MTA official who asked not to be identified.

Zarian, a retired entrepreneur, defends his record, saying he has amply demonstrated his fitness for the job through his active civic life in Glendale and his hard work on the MTA. Although he represents one of the smaller, so-called corridor, cities on the MTA board, Zarian was a highly visible figure during last year’s bus strike and was chairman of the agency’s important finance and budget committee.

“Just because I come from a small city doesn’t mean I don’t have leadership abilities,” he said in an interview at Glendale City Hall, where he spends many of his waking hours.

As MTA chairman, Zarian will preside over the monthly meetings at which the region’s transit system is designed and millions of dollars in contracts are doled out. His position will allow him to decide which issues come before the board and to control debate. Zarian will also represent the agency before state and federal lawmakers, who award scarce transportation funds.

No one doubts his passion for transportation issues. Zarian has made transit one of the top priorities of his political career. Last November, he used the backdrop of Glendale’s train station to launch his bid for reelection to the City Council and to trumpet his achievements on the MTA board.

“If we don’t do something about transportation and getting people out of their cars, we’re going to be cursed by our children and grandchildren,” he said.

One of Zarian’s foremost goals for his tenure as chairman of the MTA board, where he succeeds county Supervisor Mike Antonovich, is to encourage members to act for the good of the region, not merely their own districts.

The board must “work together in unison for a transportation system that takes out parochialism, that takes out, ‘What’s in it for me.’ We need to think of Southern California as one,” Zarian said.

He said his fellow MTA directors, with whom Zarian has a good relationship, agree with him; the board plans to convene a retreat later this month to plan strategy for the coming year.

“We all feel the organization is too political,” said Jim Cragin, MTA director from the city of Gardena.

But John Fasana, a Duarte city councilman who has served with Zarian on the MTA board for the past two years, said Zarian must be realistic about the demands put on politicians who want to remain in office.

“We want to be regionally focused . . . but at the same time, the bottom line is that there have been times when I know if my region isn’t getting equal treatment I’ll use any means I can to attain that treatment,” Fasana said.

In fact, despite his insistence on the bigger picture, Zarian has been a forceful advocate for his own city, promoting a $559-million light-rail line that would travel from Los Angeles to Burbank via Glendale.

When word went out that the proposed trolley system would likely be omitted from the MTA’s new 20-year plan, an irate Zarian called MTA Chief Executive Officer Franklin L. White at home to demand an explanation.

In spite of Zarian’s efforts, the line was cut from the long-range plan, although the MTA board agreed to reconsider it if more funding became available. Zarian denies that his boosterism for the line is an example of the provincialism he decries, saying instead that he and his constituents were willing, in the end, to sacrifice it for the greater good of the $2.9-billion agency’s financial health.

As the former owner of a chain of retail shops called Anthony’s Department Store, Zarian wants to import business principles to the MTA, which faces a $350-million deficit this year.

Zarian advocates closer scrutiny of contracts, a reduction in the number of MTA consultants and frugal spending of contingency funds. He also said the agency may have to rethink its current emphasis on subway construction, including the controversial decision to locate a rail line across the San Fernando Valley, mostly underground.

In his quest to mold the MTA along private sector lines, Zarian is of like minds with Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, another businessman-turned-politician.

Riordan’s support is crucial on the 13-member MTA board because he controls four votes: his own and those of three appointees. Despite being the board’s current chairman, Zarian does not wield that kind of power since only the mayor of Los Angeles can appoint others to the board.

“By nature of Larry not having that kind of clout, he’s not going to have that much influence or power in getting other members to go along with him,” said Mel Wilson, a Northridge real estate broker who is one of Riordan’s MTA appointees.

“It’s going to require a lot more political acumen to get to the seven” votes necessary to carry the board, Wilson said.

“It’s a new league--he’s moved up another step in wheeling and dealing,” said David Weaver, a two-time Glendale City Council candidate whom Zarian defeated in April. “How successful he’ll be, I don’t know.”

Added Antonovich: “He needs to be tough; he needs to follow up on the hard questions. He needs to continue to bring accountability to an agency that is costing the taxpayers millions of dollars.”

Zarian said he has established a good rapport with the other board members. He is confident that he will be able to exert the control needed to run the board and rein in an often unchecked MTA staff.

“I’m vocal, I’m upfront,” he said. “I say things the way they are.”

Zarian said he has Riordan’s support, although sources say Zarian looked pointedly at Riordan during a recent closed-door meeting as he told board members that none of them should claim individual credit for what the MTA does as a whole.

Riordan will succeed Zarian as MTA chairman next year. The chairmanship rotates among the city of Los Angeles, the county and the corridor cities. Zarian is the first corridor city representative to assume the top spot, which was assured when he persuaded his colleagues to name him second vice chairman when the agency was formed in 1993.

Zarian’s staunch conservative principles stem from an upbringing as an immigrant widow’s son who entered the real estate business by buying his first home in Glendale at age 19. He went on to work in the jewelry business, then retail, accumulating enough real estate holdings along the way to allow him to retire at 45.

At least two of those investments have landed Zarian in trouble.

Five years ago, a group of dissatisfied homeowners filed a lawsuit alleging that Zarian and his business partners knowingly sold poorly built condominiums in Glendale’s Glen Valley development. The $15-million suit, which still awaits trial, alleges such defects as leaky pipes and faulty electrical systems. In May, another lawsuit was filed with similar allegations about the Mount View Terrace complex in Montrose.

Zarian, aiming to defuse the issue in an interview, brought up the allegations himself.

“There aren’t too many condominium complexes in Los Angeles or anywhere that don’t have a lawsuit against them,” he said.

In the 1990 lawsuit, Zarian maintains that he was a passive investor in the projects and not the developer. The homeowners allege that he and his fellow investors have known of the problems for years without bothering to rectify them.

Critics also accuse Zarian of misrepresenting his background, particularly the perception that he is a graduate of UCLA.

During his reelection campaign, opponents insinuated that Zarian had lied about his education by pretending to hold a college degree when in fact he never graduated. A published report, which Zarian later refuted, said he claimed to have graduated in 1959 with a bachelor’s degree; indeed, his current resume lists his schooling as Glendale College and UCLA, where his “major” was “political science.”

Zarian now contends that he never claimed to have earned a bachelor’s degree. UCLA officials confirm that Zarian enrolled in extension courses in the early 1960s but did not at any time take regular undergraduate classes that would have qualified him for a degree.

Rumors have long circulated that Zarian, a committed Republican, is preparing to run for higher office, possibly Antonovich’s county seat if the veteran supervisor decides to retire.

“I think he wants to be known and respected and sought after,” Weaver said. “That’s the type of person he is. He wants to be the center and have others help.” . . .

“He does seem to be able to be wherever he’s needed. He can be in more places at one time than anybody I’ve ever met.”

Zarian, who has hinted that he will retire from the Glendale City Council after his current term expires, will not rule out higher political aspirations. But he says he is content with his current post--”the MTA chairmanship is a higher office,” he said.

“Things change that you have no control over,” Zarian said. But “I’m happy doing what I am now.”

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Profile of Larry Zarian

Age: 57

Background: Born in Tehran, Iran, to Armenian immigrant parents. Graduated from Chelsea High School in Chelsea, Mass. Lives in Glendale.

Political experience: Metropolitan Transportation Authority vice chairman 1993-94; member of the Glendale City Council since 1983; Glendale mayor 1986-87, 1990-91, 1993-94; chairman, State Regional Water Quality Board, 1986 to present; co-chairman, L. A. County Bush-Quayle campaign; lifelong member of the Republican Party.

Family: Divorced in 1982 from wife Doris. Three sons: Vincent, born in 1962, and identical twins Lawrence and Gregory, born in 1965.

Other: Host, KIEV-AM radio program “Government in Action,” 1985 to present.