The MTA Should Get Its Priorities Straight : Selecting a new CEO has to be high on the list

It is extremely difficult to improve the performance of a local or regional board through legislative fiat. Sacramento tried that in 1993, when it decided that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board should be composed of local government officeholders rather than political appointees.

But the resulting MTA board hasn’t worked much better than its appointed predecessors on the old Southern California Rapid Transit District and Los Angeles County Transportation Commission boards.

Perhaps that’s one reason Assembly Bill 273, by Steve Kuykendall (R-Long Beach), was defeated last week. Kuykendall’s bill was based on Mayor Richard Riordan’s so-called “take the politics out of the MTA” plan, which would go back to appointees on a board that would shrink from 13 members to nine. The bill would have strengthened the mayor’s influence on the MTA board, handing him control of one-third of the votes.

Kuykendall has said he will try to resurrect his proposal, and there are other ideas afloat in the Legislature for MTA board reform. Assemblyman Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), for example, favors a 14-member MTA board elected by the people.

We have a few thoughts. The first involves our strong sense that too much time has been spent on board reform, and on the possible selection of an advisor/consultant to the MTA’s chief executive officer when the MTA has no chief executive officer.

PLENTY GOING ON: The MTA and its board are currently absorbed in all manner of variously important, nagging, ludicrous and controversial developments and decision making:

Underground easements will be seized through eminent domain, and the digging and blasting of a subway under the Santa Monica Mountains will proceed, despite fierce opposition. A long-stalled plan to abolish the MTA police force and merge it with existing police agencies is gathering force. The Police Commission has issued a stinging rebuke to the MTA in ordering a halt to nighttime work at a Metro Rail construction site in Hollywood, further delaying a project already over budget and behind schedule. And it’s been revealed that the cash-hauling armored truck company fired by the MTA for alleged mismanagement has gained a $1-million contract from Metrolink, which gets most of its operating funds from the MTA. And a major bus riders lawsuit against the MTA is approaching.

A DUBIOUS PACE: All of this is going on without a permanent CEO at the helm. And in the meantime, the interim CEO has maintained a low public profile, as interim heads typically do.

MTA board members Riordan, Larry Zarian, Yvonne Burke, Mike Antonovich and Raoul Perez have been tapped to determine, by next month, the methods to be employed in a CEO search, but a sense of urgency seems to be lacking. Actually, this is the matter of preeminent importance to the MTA, and it must proceed apace. It’s next to impossible to establish and keep focus in any organization without a permanent leader.

And any move to reconfigure the MTA board down the line should attempt to address the following problems: its members’ woeful lack of detailed knowledge and experience in construction and transportation; an inability to follow its legislative mandate for setting policy, strategy, long-term planning and budgetary oversight; its penchant for micro-managing day-to-day operations, even to the point of forcing redesigns and modifications that result in construction cost increases, construction delays, increased vehicle wear and higher maintenance costs.

Any MTA board reform bill that manages to emerge from Sacramento won’t matter a whit if those shortcomings are ignored.