Tollway Agencies Battling Merger, Reports Indicate

As Orange County’s largest transportation agency floats a series of recommendations that may help it absorb the county’s toll road agencies, tollway officials are fighting furiously against a merger, according to dueling public reports released this week.

Officials from the Orange County Transportation Authority say they are simply looking at the creation of a single agency that would ensure greater public accountability, better coordination of countywide transportation services, less duplication and a reduction in taxpayer costs.

The authority’s staff has recommended forming a five-person task force of toll board and authority members to consider a mega-agency to handle all transportation matters in Orange County.

But tollway administrators are “stringing the barbed wire around their offices and digging the moat,” said County Supervisor William G. Steiner, a member of both the tollway board and the Orange County Transportation Authority.

The toll road agencies may try to scuttle the proposal as early as today as they consider a lengthy staff report opposing consolidation.

The battle over who controls the future of Orange County transportation--from its freeway construction to its bus service--surfaced in the late 1980s and early 1990s when officials cast about for ways to eliminate duplication among its agencies. The county’s transportation commission ultimately took over the transit district in 1991, forming the authority.

The tollway boards--planning California’s first three modern public toll roads in southern and eastern Orange County--thwarted efforts at a takeover then, but the proposal is gaining momentum in the wake of stories last year in The Times that questioned the salaries, perks and other benefits of top tollway administrators.

The Times reported that the tollway boards lavished huge salaries and bonuses--even a low-interest home loan--on its top executives at a time when the project’s cost nearly doubled and fell years behind schedule.

Tollway officials defended the benefits and say early cost projections and schedules were only estimates.

In its report, the tollway staff argues that until the Transportation Corridor Agencies were formed a decade ago, neither the county nor any other transportation agency was able to get the projects off the ground.

The report notes that the transportation authority did not even bother to include the tollways on a list of projects funded through a half-cent sales tax approved by voters in 1990. Authority officials say tollway administrators didn’t ask that the roads be included.

Tollway agency officials say they accomplished much over 10 years: obtaining environmental clearance; quickly designing the roads; securing local, state and federal funds; and awarding construction contracts.

Among their accomplishments, the report says, are the successful bond financing of the roads, the opening of a 7 1/2-mile stretch of the Foothill Transportation Corridor and the environmental approvals that came despite legal fights from those concerned about the roads’ path through ecologically sensitive areas.

By not staying the course and keeping the same tollway board membership--city and county officials whose jurisdictions include the toll roads--the projects may be put at risk, the report said.

“Any consolidation proposal must confront the legal and political reality that the financing for the projects could become unraveled” if the board membership is changed, particularly in light of “commitments made to the bondholders and the banks” that are helping to finance the roads.

Tollway staffers also suggest that tolls may be extended long after the roads’ debt is paid off to pay for other transportation projects.

“Now that the risk capital has borne fruit, other areas of the county are seeking to capture the benefits of this investment,” the report said.

The authority staff is recommending the creation of a task force consisting of County Supervisors Don Saltarelli and Marian Bergeson, members of both agencies; Laguna Niguel Mayor Patricia C. Bates, chairwoman of the San Joaquin toll road board; San Clemente City Councilman Scott Diehl, chairman of the Foothill/Eastern toll board; and Laguna Niguel Councilman Thomas W. Wilson, an authority member.

The staff has also recommended retaining consultant Dan Miller to do a more thorough study of consolidation. Miller has already finished a preliminary study for the authority that suggests a merger could work.

Stan Oftelie, the authority’s executive director, said he can’t believe that the tollways’ top administrator, William C. Woollett Jr., has already concluded in a staff report that looking at a possible merger is “not feasible or appropriate to consider . . . at this time.”

“I’m kind of surprised by their reaction,” Oftelie said. “It seems that having fewer governmental units make good sense and this deserves a good, careful airing.”

Steiner said it’s unwise not to debate the issue.

“It’s in our enlightened self-interest to keep an open mind on consolidation,” he said. “Or else, the state Legislature might just do it for us.”