Troubles At The MTA : MTA Board Derails Showdown Over Chief : Transportation: The fate of Franklin E. White will be decided by a special committee at the end of the month.

The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority averted a showdown over whether to fire the agency’s leader Wednesday, opting instead to study the question as it weighs the future of the region’s troubled rail and bus system.

The decision leaves MTA Chief Executive Officer Franklin E. White in his $178,000-a-year job at least temporarily in the face of increasingly strident criticism from some board members over the leadership of the multibillion-dollar agency. A special committee of board members will consider White’s fate at the end of the month and submit a recommendation to the full board.

“I am not satisfied with the transportation system we have today,” Mayor Richard Riordan, an MTA board member, declared after emerging from a closed session on White’s status that lasted nearly 2 1/2 hours, preempting all the board’s other business for the day.

Riordan--a frequent critic of the MTA’s policies--was seen as the key vote on the issue because he controls three other appointments on the board in addition to his own seat. But he continued to avoid a public stance on White’s status Wednesday, saying only that he believed the board acted “very responsibly” by referring the issue to one of its committees.

But some of White’s supporters were skeptical. The move represented “a procedural dodge,” said Eric Mann, head of a bus riders union that has lambasted the MTA’s operations but found itself in the ironic position Wednesday of defending White. If the board’s leadership wanted to fire White, Mann said, “they should have had the guts to do it today.”

The 54-year-old White, showing little emotion after the board announced its action, refused any comment.

White’s job status had become a subject of intense speculation at the MTA in recent months as financial, legal and political problems mounted at the agency, particularly in the construction of the county’s problem-riddled $5.8-billion subway system. An uneasy truce between the chief executive and his critics was shattered last week when two board members decided--despite opposition from the board chairman--to seek his abrupt ouster before the full board.

The move caught many off guard, and it prompted several days of intense lobbying and meetings among members of the 13-member board. More than half of the panel members have refused to state a public position on whether White should remain at the agency, leading to wide-ranging speculation about how Wednesday’s vote would go.

Before the closed-door meeting, more than a dozen speakers representing Hollywood homeowners, bus riders and other transit groups addressed the board, with most supporting White in fighting what some termed “a witch hunt.”

Their refrain became a common one: White had not succeeded in some key areas of reform but, despite the agency’s failings, deserved to keep his job.

“Is Frank White a profile in courage?” asked Mann. “No, but he should not be a scapegoat.”

The issue of race--previously only whispered in the debate over White, one of the region’s highest-ranking African Americans--became vocal and explosive at the meeting.

A group of local black leaders wrote the board a letter backing White. In addition, L.A. Twice--a group of MTA whistle-blowers--called on the head of the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington to open an investigation into alleged racism at the agency, based in part on its “humiliating” treatment of White in recent days.

Summoning a phrase made famous during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, L.A. Twice leader John Walsh said: “This is not a high-tech lynching because we would never accuse the MTA of anything high-tech. This is a low-tech lynching.”

As Riordan confronted a crush of reporters after Wednesday’s meeting at the transit agency’s new Gateway Headquarters next to Union Station, he refused to answer several questions about the race issue as he pushed toward a private elevator.

Finally, when asked about one speaker’s assertion that the firing of White could prompt racial unrest, he said: “I don’t think so. I think I would be a racist if I based my decision on anything other than [White’s] performance.”

But even as the board sought to bring some calm to an agency under attack from critics in Sacramento and Washington, its problems continued to escalate when a bus driver was assaulted Tuesday night--on the same route on which another driver was severely beaten last week.

In the latest incident, three youths boarded a Line 45 bus at Broadway and 82nd Street and robbed the passengers at gunpoint. The driver of the bus, who was not identified, was struck in the head with the butt of a gun before the youths fled. The driver was treated and released.