Subway Fund Cutoff Is Threatened : Metro Rail: Legislators also denounce management of project. MTA officials deny charges of endangering workers and slighting bus riders.

Stepping up their broadsides against Los Angeles transit planners, state lawmakers Tuesday lashed out at management of the region’s subway construction and threatened to shut down a half-billion-dollar funding pipeline from Sacramento for a project that one critic charged is “out of control.”

At a daylong state Senate hearing in Los Angeles that often turned personal and testy, witnesses accused local transit officials of cavalierly putting workers at risk during the subway construction and of balancing the $5.8-billion project on the backs of the poor, who could face higher bus fares and decreased service for the sake of the subway.

The charges were vigorously denied by officials with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. But they faced an openly skeptical audience among the 10 visiting members of the state Legislature, several of whom maintained during heated exchanges with transit officials that the MTA had reneged on its promises to turn around the troubled subway project.

The same panel--the Senate Transportation Committee--heard testimony in Los Angeles last fall after parts of Hollywood Boulevard sank up to 10 inches. The problems have only accelerated since then, with the collapse of roadway into a 70-foot sinkhole, the discovery of new thin walls along Vermont Avenue and the conviction of an MTA official on kickback charges.

Ticking off these and other setbacks that have plagued the project, state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) quipped: “So much for the ‘new management, no problems’ predictions of last November.”

Calling the agency “a bloated tapeworm,” Hayden said the MTA has demonstrated that it is unable to manage its own affairs and that lawmakers in Washington and Sacramento must act to “kill the subway before it kills us.”

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) said of the MTA, an agency created by the state less than three years ago: “If this is growing pain, I sort of hate to see what the kid’s gonna turn out like.”

Angry at hearing legislators “pile on” criticisms, MTA board Chairman Larry Zarian told state lawmakers sarcastically that they were “doing a great favor to the rest of the nation.” He noted that a U.S. Senate panel has recommended that federal funding for the subway be reduced and the money given to other cities vying for scarce transportation dollars.

“Have we made mistakes? Yes, we have,” Zarian told legislators. “Will we make mistakes again? Yes, we will. But we need to look at the positives,” such as future economic benefits and improvements in

As harsh as criticisms were, legislators put off testimony on what had promised to be some of the most sensitive issues. The panel chairman, Sen. Quentin Kopp (I-San Francisco), agreed to a last-minute postponement in the appearances of three subpoenaed witnesses from the MTA and a contractor who were expected to discuss allegations that independent audits at the agency may have been compromised and billings inflated.

Zarian said that hearing such matters in public testimony could “undermine” the work of the MTA’s inspector general. And Hayden aide Rocky Rushing said the committee would need more time anyway to review the matter.

The committee did hear testimony from a Cal/OSHA safety inspector who said construction managers had endangered the lives of project workers in the hours before a sinkhole appeared June 22 on Hollywood Boulevard.

Despite the danger that the street could give way at any time, safety inspector Joe Doyle testified, a Shea-Kiewit-Kenny supervisor told him--wrongly, as it turned out--that no workers were left in the tunnel shortly before it caved in. The workers later had to be evacuated.

On Monday, Cal/OSHA issued more than $70,000 in fines against Shea-Kiewit-Kenny in connection with the incident. But John Shea, subpoenaed to appear before the committee, testified that the firm has an exemplary safety record and that “we did get the men out of the tunnel when we deemed . . . it was unsafe to be in there.”

Pursuing a wide range of other issues as well, state legislators also:

* Questioned why transit officials fired the firm building the subway but not the firm supervising the construction.

The question was raised by state Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), who estimated that substandard wooden wedges were used 30,000 times in the subway tunnel under the supervision of the private construction manager Parsons-Dillingham.

“The taxpayers paid for steel. We got wood and mud,” Polanco said.

MTA Chief Executive Officer Franklin E. White said the agency has been troubled by Parsons-Dillingham’s supervision of the subway project.

“Mr. White, we heard that a year ago,” Polanco responded. By keeping the firm on the job, “you’re rewarding a firm that was responsible for overseeing [fired tunnel contractor] Shea-Kiewit-Kenny. That doesn’t make too much sense,” said Polanco, who derided White as the “chief apologist and cheerleader for the MTA contractors.”

* Questioned the MTA’s solvency. Polanco said he is exploring legislation to bring the MTA’s financial affairs under the control of a trustee, as was proposed in bankrupt Orange County.

* Listened to claims that transit officials are letting the nation’s most crowded bus system deteriorate in order to fund rail construction. The issue arose just days before a court case resumes on a lawsuit accusing the MTA of discriminating against minority and poor bus riders by pursuing rail projects that will serve far fewer and more affluent riders.

Constance Rice of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the plaintiff’s lead attorney in the case, argued that the subsidy for the Los Angeles-to-Long Beach trolley line is so costly that “it would be cheaper, much cheaper, to offer new Blue Line passengers door-to-door stretch limousine service.”

* Chided the MTA for building a rail line that runs across southern Los Angeles County but stops short of Los Angeles International Airport.

When White cited this coming Saturday’s opening of the Green Line as among the MTA’s accomplishments, legislators pounced on him.

The transit agency even drew the wrath of Assemblyman Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles), a former MTA board member who has tempered his criticism of the agency.

“I didn’t come here to spit on your agency,” he told White. “But I’ll tell you, to stand here and propose that somehow there isn’t something seriously wrong with the agency . . . discredits the agency [and] just fuels the frenzy.”