Mayor Proposes Restructuring MTA Board : Transit: Appointees would replace elected officials. But agency leaders criticize plan.

Acknowledging that the county’s fledgling transit agency has been beset by “turmoil and inefficiency,” Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan on Thursday proposed a major restructuring, this time by replacing its board of elected officials--including himself--with appointees.

Riordan, who is looking for a state lawmaker to sponsor the required legislation, said his proposal would “take the politics out of the MTA.” But critics say the proposed restructuring would return to the days of the county’s old transit agencies, whose boards of political surrogates were criticized for lacking accountability.

Riordan proposed replacing the 13-member MTA board with a nine-member panel of non-elected appointees. The Los Angeles mayor, the County Board of Supervisors and the League of Cities would each make three appointments.

The mayor, who sits on the MTA board, sent letters to fellow board members Thursday seeking their support for his proposal. “An appointed board of non-elected officials would be liberated from the inherent conflicts faced by politicians as they juggle the interests of multiple constituencies,” he said.

The plan drew immediate criticism from some MTA leaders, who said the proposal caught them by surprise when they were asked about it Thursday afternoon.

“To dismantle what has only been tried for 2 1/2 years I believe is counterproductive. I think we ought to fix what we have,” said MTA Board Chairman Larry Zarian, a Glendale city councilman.

“This came to me as a total surprise and a shock when the mayor talked to me about this [Thursday] afternoon,” he said. “I would have preferred for this to go through the proper channels because these kinds of things are best done with thorough discussion. . . . I don’t like surprises.”

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar)--architect of the bill that created the MTA in 1993--characterized the proposal as “essentially a power grab by Riordan” because the mayor would appoint three members--the same as the Board of Supervisors. The mayor now controls four seats on the 13-member board, while each of the five county supervisors also serves on the board. Riordan said he is open to changing the formula.

State Sen. Richard G. Polanco (D-Los Angeles) took an opposite view. “Obviously, the mayor recognizes that his service on the MTA board is a political liability,” Polanco said. “The MTA ship has hit the rocks, and the mayor wants to be the first one on the political life raft.

“The phrase ‘I didn’t vote for it, my appointee did’ will become an MTA mantra,” Polanco added.

But Riordan said, “If it was a political liability, I wouldn’t be this far out front” in proposing the restructuring.

Polanco plans to revive stalled legislation allowing voters to elect MTA board members. The MTA has opposed the labor-supported bill, which critics say is a jobs bill for politicians facing term limits. Riordan said Thursday that an elected board would “further politicize and paralyze transportation planning” in Los Angeles.

Creators of the MTA believed that the structure of the pre-MTA transit agencies hampered accountability because some officials delegated oversight and voting authority to alternates, most often non-elected and little-known aides or political supporters.

This freed the already overcommitted elected officials from having to read reams of reports and sit through hours of meetings each week. But the use of alternates also insulated the officials from responsibility for politically unpopular or legally suspect decisions.

Riordan said Thursday that his proposed appointed board was different from past appointed boards.

“The difference here is these people would be free to act in the best interests of the whole county,” he said.

“A board has to be able to step back and set priorities based on the transportation needs of the county, not what they think they need to do to garner votes in their own district,” Riordan said.

An appointed MTA board would solve what some of the mayor’s aides privately consider a tricky political problem: Riordan is in line to take over as chairman of the unpopular though powerful MTA next year as he prepares to run for reelection.

Riordan, on the other hand, has not been shy about wading into MTA controversies. He has increasingly become a major player at the MTA, bringing in experts to reorganize the subway construction program and successfully lobbying against a raid on transit funds to bail out the county.

The 29-month-old agency, with a $3-billion-a-year budget, is a powerful and highly political force in shaping the future of the nation’s most populous county. It operates the bus system, builds and operates an expanding rail system and plans highway and other transit projects.

Katz, chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, said he was glad to see the mayor take steps to address problems at the agency. He said the committee would consider the idea, but he made his initial skepticism clear.

“At first glance, his call for a return to appointees sounds like something that takes us back to the problems we had” under the agencies that preceded the MTA, Katz said. “The underlying problem is . . . that you can legislate a perfect structure, but you can’t legislate the personalities who sit on the board and make the decisions.”

Michael Gagan, editor of the Rose & Kindel MTA Report, a private lobbying newsletter, said that by removing elected politicians from the board, the mayor’s proposal offers two main selling points: It relies on appointees who may have more time to devote to the job, and it eliminates the influence of contractors’ political campaign contributions.

“The fact is that the public perceives the elected members of the MTA--and there’s only two out of 13 who are not elected now--to be raising money with one hand and making decisions on contracts with the other,” Gagan said. “That has created an unwholesome perception.”

Richard Lichtenstein, a political consultant who also works as a lobbyist for transit companies, said: “The mayor and his advisers have concluded that a big part of the MTA structural problems are due to the political haggling that goes on.”

Marvin Holen, a lawyer who served as an appointee on the defunct Southern California Rapid Transit District board and later the MTA board, said he supports Riordan’s proposal. “Persons who are appointed devote a great deal of time, effort and energy to their job, and they’re not distracted by other demands,” he said.