Divided MTA Board Decides to Shift $50 Million to County

A bitterly divided Metropolitan Transportation Authority board voted Thursday to give financially desperate Los Angeles County a one-time infusion of $50 million--far less than what some county officials said they had hoped for to help save their health care system from collapse.

The MTA board, which includes the five county supervisors, grudgingly voted 7 to 4 to approve the shift after weeks of acrimonious debate, even as a new proposal to give the county as much as $220 million more in transit-fund loans was being discussed in Sacramento. MTA Board Chairman Larry Zarian and other board members said they voted yes only to head off a bigger raid on their treasury, which has been proposed by Los Angeles-area lawmakers eager to come to the county’s rescue.

The MTA vote underscored deep divisions among the county supervisors on how to avert a planned Oct. 1 shutdown of nearly all county health clinics and comprehensive health centers.

Supervisors Deane Dana and Gloria Molina voted for the $50 million despite repeated requests by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky that they vote no so the county could continue to negotiate for more transit funds. Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke’s appointee abstained, and Supervisor Mike Antonovich’s appointee voted no.

The supervisors’ inability to present a united front hurt them, Yaroslavsky said, by sending a confusing message to Sacramento over whether they really need additional help from the MTA or anywhere else. Besides various proposals to raid as much as $425 million in transit funds over the next five years to help the county, a new proposal surfaced Thursday that would allow Los Angeles County to get at least $30 million from the Metropolitan Water District.

Yaroslavsky said the county’s fiscal crisis is too dire for the supervisors to reject any proposed funding source, no matter how unpalatable it is politically.

“It looks odd that the Legislature is trying to provide additional assistance and county officials are saying no,” said Yaroslavsky, a key architect of an earlier proposal to take $75 million in annual MTA money for five years. “I am sure there are legislators who will be scratching their heads, saying either the county has a financial problem or it doesn’t.

“To foreclose the option of discussing anything is counterproductive and will give solace to those legislators who don’t want to help the county anyway and will use this as an excuse to not help the county,” Yaroslavsky said. “The county is not as united as it should be.”

Two state lawmakers from the Los Angeles delegation agreed.

“I’m sick and tired of working my butt off for L. A. when all they do is ‘but, but, if, if’ and wind up belittling our work product,” said Assemblywoman Martha M. Escutia (D-Huntington Park). The supervisors, she fumed, “look to me like the Keystone Kops--them and Sally Reed.”

Reed, the county’s chief administrative officer, spent much of this week in Sacramento lobbying for help, including measures to allow the county to seize more transit funds and raise its own taxes on tobacco and alcohol. The Legislature must act on such proposals by next Friday, when the annual session ends.

State Sen. Richard G. Polanco (D-Los Angeles), who has been trying to get $425 million in transit money for the county, said Thursday that he too was disappointed. Contending that far more than the $50 million is needed, Polanco said the supervisors “need to get behind legislative efforts to save the county health system. If public health means anything [to the board], they will support our proposals.”

The Legislature could vote to allow the county to raid even more MTA funds despite Thursday’s MTA board action, but it would need the approval of Gov. Pete Wilson. In the past, Wilson has indicated that his support of additional aid to the county was contingent on a consensus among county and transit officials. Wilson has vetoed a bill that would have forced the MTA to transfer $75 million annually to the county over five years.

Zarian, a Glendale city councilman, said he would fight any more raids on the transit agency’s coffers. “The MTA does not have any money,” Zarian said. “I feel like we’re being held up.”

Transit officials could not say what the immediate impact of the $50-million loss would be. But at the urging of Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, the MTA board directed Chief Executive Officer Franklin E. White not to cut bus service. Riordan in the past opposed any shift of MTA money to the county, but two of his board appointees voted to support the one-time shift.

Molina, chairwoman of the Board of Supervisors, said she voted for the $50 million for several reasons. She said sound fiscal policy dictates that the county not borrow any more money because it would only postpone a necessary downsizing of the mammoth health care system. The unincorporated areas of the county that she represents probably would bear the brunt of the repayment responsibility of the proposed $220 million in loans from the MTA.

Molina added that any raid on MTA funds would be an unfair burden on the transit agency and the thousands of bus riders who depend on it to get to work.

“The impending health crisis is not going to be resolved by shifting and shifting money around,” Molina said in an interview. “It might solve problems this year, but it doesn’t solve it for the long haul. . . . If you keep shifting these monies around, you’re not going to get to the real crux of the problem, and that is we need to address the revenue-raising authority of the county” so it can keep pace with the services that the state mandates it provide. Although she agreed that it is important for county leaders to present a united front to Sacramento, Molina said, “it should not be a wishy-washy one of trying to get whatever you can get.”

Few details of the proposed MWD fund shift were disclosed Thursday, but they immediately drew a storm of protest. The water district, which encompasses six Southern California counties, issued an opposition paper that said the proposal would raise water rates for all consumers, jeopardize capital improvement programs and undermine the giant agency’s credit rating.

Steve Harvey, a San Diego councilman, characterized the proposal as “a plain theft of water taxpayers’ money . . . as is typical with back-room deals made in the closing days of the legislative session.”

Times staff writers Max Vanzi in Sacramento and Jeffrey L. Rabin in Los Angeles contributed to this story.