MTA OKs Loans, Aid if Property Owners Don’t Sue Over Tunnels

In a meeting that began with conciliatory moves and ended in insults, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board on Wednesday approved the creation of a loan program and rapid-response teams to assist owners of properties damaged in the wake of subway tunneling--so long as they promise not to sue the agency.

The board also decided to begin serious study of proposals to build a subway in a shallow trench from North Hollywood to Van Nuys and create either a light-rail line or enhanced bus service to take commuters between Van Nuys and Warner Center in Woodland Hills.

In the plan to deal quickly with sinking or cracking buildings along subway tunneling routes, MTA Chief Executive Joseph E. Drew offered to authorize payment of businesses’ or homeowners’ repair bills, mortgage installments or emergency hotel bills as rapidly as 72 hours after a claim is made.

He said he would put aside $2 million in next year’s budget to pay for the program, which would also establish seven-person field teams comprising a representative from the tunneling contractor, an independent claims adjuster and staff members from the MTA’s construction, public affairs, risk management, budget and legal departments.

The catch: Drew said that MTA lawyers told him not to make the aid available to those who had filed lawsuits against the agency.

“I am perfectly willing for anyone to withdraw from their lawsuit and come into the claims environment and we will work with them,” he said.

The proposal was angrily rejected by several property owners who have joined together in filing $2 billion in legal claims against the MTA over damage along Hollywood and Lankershim boulevards. They complained that the program amounted to little more than rhetoric and an assault on their constitutional rights to seek redress in court for ruined businesses and lives.

“To tell people that they should get rid of their lawyers to get money from you is absolutely unconscionable,” Gerald Schneiderman, a major Hollywood Boulevard property owner who has coordinated 1,400 lawsuits against the MTA, told the board.

Schneiderman says that the $2 million budgeted will be spent on new MTA consultants, staffing and equipment rather than for assistance to property owners.

In an interview, county Supervisor and MTA board member Mike Antonovich agreed with Schneiderman, declaring he was “appalled” by Drew’s decision to turn away property owners who have sued the agency.

“Taking advantage of people who are harmed as a result of government action is unacceptable,” he said. “When you hide behind lawyers you break people who will settle for pennies.”

Drew said the pilot program for the response teams had already begun in North Hollywood and would next be initiated in Hollywood, the Wilshire district and on the East Side.

In contrast, the board faced little protest over its decision to study an alternative to the expense of tunneling a subway through the West Valley by building a heavy-rail system, either in a covered or open trench.

The lone opposition came from Rabbi Marvin J. Sugarman, leader of a Jewish community centered in the neighborhood between Chandler and Burbank boulevards, through which the route would be most likely to pass. Sugarman demanded that the board either dig a “deep-bore” subway as required by a 5-year-old state law or route the subway a few blocks north under Oxnard Avenue.

In addition, businessman Nathan Brogin told the board that members of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. favored the construction of a subway across the entire Valley, declaring that studies showed light rail in the East Valley would not meet the area’s escalating traffic needs over the next 20 years.

MTA employees next will hold hearings over the summer to prepare an environmental impact report and a study determining the cost-effectiveness of each route and technology. The MTA board must make a final choice by December to become eligible for $1 billion in federal transportation funds.

In other action, the board ordered Drew to seek solutions to tunnel construction quality control and safety issues raised in a series of stories that appeared in The Times earlier this month.

The motion by Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre directed the chief executive to consult with officials in the city Public Works, Contract Administration and Building and Safety departments in an effort to “evaluate the effectiveness” of the transit agency’s construction management teams.

“So many of the MTA’s inspectors are hired from out of state and might not understand the codes, regulations and standards that we have here in the city of L.A.,” said Daniel Farkas, transportation deputy to Alatorre.

In the same vein, the board approved a motion by county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky to impose significant financial penalties on contractors who “routinely violate” safety, noise and nighttime work specifications or restrictions during subway or light rail construction.

For minor infractions, the contractor would be penalized $1,000 for the first offense, $5,000 for the second offense and $10,000 for offenses thereafter. For major infractions, the proposed scale ranges from $5,000 to $15,000.