U.S. Official Warns MTA to Stop Infighting

A top federal transportation official warned Friday that the MTA must stop political infighting and “clean up its act” or risk losing crucial federal funds for the Los Angeles subway.

Federal Transit Administrator Gordon J. Linton said he plans to deliver that message personally to Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials, who have been called to Washington for a meeting Monday with U.S. Transportation Secretary Federico Pena to discuss the future of the troubled Metro Rail project.

Linton said in an interview with The Times that he has become increasingly distressed by the continued turmoil at the MTA, including the recent resignation of the agency’s second chief executive officer in 3 1/2 years, a projected $1-billion shortfall in the county’s long-range plan, continuing tunneling problems and, now, debate over whether Los Angeles should proceed with subway construction.

When told of Linton’s comments, MTA board Chairman Larry Zarian replied: “If that’s his message, he’s probably right.”

MTA officials have received a short letter from Pena, The Times has learned, in which the transportation secretary echoed some of Linton’s concerns. “I’ve been concerned about reports I have received from the FTA as well as in the public media concerning the management, schedules and financing of these major public investments,” the letter said.

Linton, who previously withheld funds for the subway until the MTA took steps to improve its management of the project, warned that Los Angeles is suffering from a “lack of confidence” on Capitol Hill that threatens to cost the agency federal funds. Congress recently provided less than half of the funds requested by the MTA this year for the region’s biggest public works project.

“The reality is that if this behavior continues, they’re going to lose funding” to other cities competing for transportation dollars, Linton said. The MTA’s troubles, he added, are giving other cities seeking money “ammunition to load up their guns and say, ‘Take it away from Los Angeles.’ ”

“We need to see a board that is in sync on its commitment to this project,” he added. “It’s more important than ever for something to be done immediately [to restore confidence in the project] if there’s hope of continued appropriations.”

Linton took the extraordinary step in 1994 of freezing funding after portions of Hollywood Boulevard above the tunneling sank as much as 10 inches. And he said Friday that the MTA’s problems have made it more difficult for the Clinton administration to defend in Congress requests for big subway appropriations.

The federal government has agreed to pay for about half of the $5.9-billion subway project.

Zarian will lead a delegation of five board members to Washington on Monday, and Mayor Richard Riordan, who also serves on the MTA board, will participate in the meeting by speakerphone from Los Angeles. On Thursday, Zarian sent a confidential letter to his board colleagues imploring them to “stop being parochial and forget our own selfish needs.”

“Of course, we’ve caused a lot of our own problems,” Zarian said in an interview Friday. “But the fact is that the pot is half of what it was. And that’s going to cause a change of thinking.”

Zarian, a Glendale city councilman, said he wants the Clinton administration to tell him how the MTA should complete the subway in light of the shortfall in federal funding.

“I need to tell the administrator that it’s one thing to say, ‘Finish these lines,’ but how do you do it without money?” Zarian said.

One MTA member has described the unusual meeting in Washington as a “visit to the woodshed.”

In the interview Linton would not enter the growing debate at the MTA over whether the agency should proceed with extending the subway to the Eastside or the Mid-City area or study whether aboveground rail lines could be built cheaper and faster.

But he said, “We’re more concerned with them building a project within a reasonable time.” He noted that any change in plans would require federal approval.

“It depends on what they present us,” Linton added. “If they come up with a plan that can restore the confidence that the money spent . . . provides mobility for the people of Los Angeles . . . and that they’re going to demonstrate that this is a board that is in sync on that particular approach, then you can make a case to us and Congress that [the MTA], in fact, has [its] act together.”