Abrupt Dismissal Won’t Fix MTA : Woes of transit agency go far beyond its CEO

We’ve said it before: Responsibility for the woes of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority extend far beyond its chief executive, Franklin White. We say so again because of a scheduled MTA board meeting in which the firing of White may be recommended and approved.

This is the wrong time for any such action. Less than four months remain before White’s next performance evaluation. A formal procedure for the assessment of his performance was agreed on by the 13-member MTA board earlier this year. The board ought stick to that schedule and do the assessment properly and thoroughly. That is the wish of MTA Chairman Larry Zarian.

FAULTS IN BOARD: We do not mean here to issue an endorsement of White’s stewardship. Our concern is simply that some members of the MTA board will be entering Friday’s meeting with unclean hands.

Consider the report on the MTA released eight months ago by Arthur Andersen & Co. The consulting firm’s report said that the MTA was handicapped by a board whose members had little experience in construction and rail transit and that the situation was exacerbated because the board engaged in politically influenced decision-making.

Nor did the board confine itself to matters of policy, strategy and oversight, the Andersen report said; instead, members engaged in rampant micro-management and second-guessing of the authority’s staff.

As a result, it concluded, consultants and contractors could never be certain of the criteria to be used in evaluating their work.

Compared to five other similar transit boards, the report said, the MTA was the least supportive of its staff, so much so that the ability of the board and staff to work together had been destroyed. Unseemly public harangues by board members only worsened morale.

Meddlesome micro-management of the type noted by the Andersen report undermines the authority of any chief executive. The MTA is a bureaucratic behemoth that is all too often slow to respond to public concerns, and the board has been a key part of the problem. It is true that, under Zarian, the board has taken important steps to reform its role, but that process is ongoing and incomplete.

BAD IMAGE FOR POST: The chorus of complaints that the MTA board is looking for a scapegoat will grow louder if it acts to terminate White. (The Friday meeting, we note, occurs two days before “60 Minutes” supposedly will broadcast an unflattering portrait of the MTA subway project.)

Dismissal of White would be a tripwire, heightening the growing sense that the job of MTA chief executive is an impossible one, held at the whim of a politically capricious board.

A situation like this often results in the wrong kind of short list when a search is made for a new chief executive. The most qualified applicants close their doors with a hasty “no, thanks.”