Rep. Berman Warns MTA on Contract Flap

An influential congressman warned Friday that the Metro Rail project in Los Angeles could lose financial support from Washington and face another federal investigation if local officials override an expert panel’s recommendations next week on a lucrative Eastside subway contract.

Raising the stakes in the political battle, Rep. Howard Berman (D-Panorama City) said he is “rethinking” his support of federal subway funding after county transit chief Joseph E. Drew recommended a business team ranked last by a panel of construction experts to supervise tunneling on the Eastside.

Several other local members of Congress were concerned enough about the $65-million contract that they questioned Drew this week. Los Angeles Democrat Lucille Roybal-Allard said she was encouraged by an MTA committee’s vote Thursday to reject Drew’s recommendation and was hopeful that the full board would concur.

“I have heard no plausible--much less compelling--argument for overturning the evaluation of the experts,” said Berman, who has supported the subway funding for a decade. “The chief executive’s decision shakes the public’s confidence in the process. They ask, ‘What is that agency doing with our money?’ ”

Berman’s comments come at a time when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority can least afford to lose friends on Capitol Hill. Congress last month allocated less than half of the $158.9 million sought for the subway, forcing local transit officials to reassess their plans for the region’s biggest project. Tunneling is scheduled to begin next year on extending the subway from Union Station to 1st and Lorena streets in Boyle Heights.

Mayor Richard Riordan, a key MTA board member who appoints three other directors, said he had not decided how to vote. In a written statement, however, he said he is opposed to “meddling and micro-management” and welcomed “tough decision-making by the CEO to do the job for which he was hired.”

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, an MTA board member who was instrumental in the committee action Thursday, said he resented the statement issued by the mayor. “This is not a matter of micro-management. It is a matter of protecting the integrity of the agency.”

*

The contract, which will come before the full MTA board Wednesday, also has given Drew, a former combat pilot and Kern County administrator, his toughest test as the head of a politically charged agency.

In a memorandum to board members last week and in interviews, Drew said he recommended Metro East Consultants, an Encino-based consortium led by O’Brien-Kreitzberg Corp., to manage subway construction because its German partners had the best tunneling expertise.

Drew stated that he did not want to recommend the panels’ top-ranked team, a North Hollywood-based consortium led by Jacobs Engineering called JMA, because he believed it had its hands full supervising a “problematic” tunnel drive through the Hollywood Hills. He said he disqualified the second-ranked team, Bechtel Infrastructure Corp., because he considered the panelists’ selection process “somewhat inexplicable.”

MTA spokeswoman Rae James said Drew was reflecting on board members’ reaction to his decision but would not comment Friday. She added: “He did not take his decision lightly. As CEO he is paid to make recommendations. Ultimately, this is a board decision.”

Some Metro East partners have ties to influential Los Angeles City Councilman and MTA board member Richard Alatorre, who represents the Eastside. Several executives for companies in the consortium have either worked for or raised money for the councilman. The wife of one executive is Alatorre’s chief of staff.

Alatorre, one of Riordan’s three appointees to the board, said he “in no way influenced Joseph Drew” in the recommendation of Metro East. “Joseph Drew’s track record shows that he is a man of principle,” Alatorre said.

*

County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke said she thought the board tried to shield the contract from politics by hiring a panel of seven construction experts at a cost of $375,000 to evaluate the bidders.

“Why hire them if you’re not going to pay any attention to them?” she asked. However, Burke said she has not made up her mind on the contract and would be meeting with all the contractors and reviewing tapes of their presentations to the MTA.

John Fasana, a Duarte city councilman who also serves on the MTA board, said he supports Drew’s choice of Metro East.

“If people at other levels wish to interject themselves in decisions that we have to make as a board, I don’t know where it stops,” he said. As for Berman’s threat of a possible federal investigation, Fasana said: “It’s not like we’re strangers to investigations.”

State Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) is taking his opposition to Drew’s decision to President Clinton. He said that he has faxed letters to the president and leaders of a U.S. Senate subcommittee investigating Metro Rail urging their “immediate attention” to what he called “new revelations of corruption, illegality and waste” at the MTA.