A Dose of Reality for What Ails the MTA

About a year ago, when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board dumped then-CEO Franklin E. White, it looked for and found the replacement it wanted, Joseph E. Drew. Too often, Drew wound up telling the MTA board what it wanted to hear:

The Red Line subway extensions to Mid-City, the Eastside and North Hollywood? No problem, can do. The Blue Line Trolley from Pasadena to downtown? Can do. Improve the nation’s most overcrowded bus system enough to ward off a lawsuit by bus riders? Sure.

Now Drew has resigned. The authority has a $1-billion structural deficit and no immediate plan for rectifying it. And the infighting continues to jeopardize federal funding.

The CEO should have expressly stated that it was impossible to move on all fronts. Next, the pros and cons of the options should have been laid out, and the decision to proceed on one or two should have been put directly to the MTA board for a vote. Then, a project could have been finished and there could have been a success to tout.

This is what was needed in a CEO and what’s desperately needed now. The next CEO will have to be an established and respected leadership presence in his or her own right, one not subject to the capricious and parochial whims of the 13-member MTA board.

A major part of the problem continues to be the board itself. The shift from an appointed board to the current setup, in which local elected officials make up the board, was supposed to have increased board accountability. Instead, an independent audit released last week found that some board members have been incredibly meddlesome and active in pursuing narrow interests, calling MTA staffers directly to influence procurement and day-to-day operations.

And the public doesn’t need board members making comments as if they were casual observers with no direct influence over decision making. For example, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, the board’s most powerful member, once remarked that the old 20-year MTA plan was a joke; that a subway into the San Fernando Valley beyond North Hollywood was unlikely; that continuing a Mid-City subway appeared unfeasible. Wouldn’t it have been better for Riordan to have pushed early on to scrap the 20-year plan or to have led in reaching decisions about the unfeasibility of subway extensions in the context of what projects could be completed?

Finding a formula for a responsive board that has a sense of regional, not parochial, needs is difficult. This board is too large and mired in political allegiances. A smaller board would help, and the idea of a state-appointed panel can no longer be dismissed out of hand. The failure of efforts to date has been painfully obvious.

From now on, any appearance of impropriety in contracting decisions must be avoided at all costs. The public, the state and the Congress must be convinced that the MTA is dealing with public transit projects, not political patronage projects.