MTA Board Still Stalled on Crucial Decisions

Just days after federal officials warned the county’s transit agency to get its act together or risk losing funds, a bitterly divided MTA board Wednesday was unable to solve either its pressing financial problems or end the controversy that has stalled tunneling to the Eastside.

“This is not the kind of signal we need to send to Washington,” MTA board Chairman Larry Zarian lamented after a contentious meeting that ended in no decision over the selection of a business team to supervise the Eastside subway extension. “I am very concerned.”

The board also delayed a vote on shifting $300 million from other transit projects to help keep tunneling on schedule after a civil rights attorney warned that the shift could endanger the MTA’s ability to comply with a court order to expand bus service.

“I want to know what effect this will have on buses and [carpool] lanes before I vote,” Mayor Richard Riordan, who is also an MTA board member, said in calling for delaying the vote.

The board couldn’t even agree on naming an interim chief executive officer to replace Joseph E. Drew, whose resignation this month stunned the board.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials, however, did announce that they are considering temporarily hiring Alan F. Kiepper, a former president of New York City Transit, to oversee rail and bus operations, and former Los Angeles County public works director Thomas A. Tidemanson to supervise rail construction while a nationwide search is conducted for a permanent chief executive.

And board members did take action on several matters. They voted to begin touring subway construction sites every six months in an effort to improve their oversight of the troubled project. They also approved a controversial $10.4-million loan to Foothill Transit to help fund maintenance facilities in El Monte and Pomona.

The board meeting was the first since U.S. Transportation Secretary Federico Pena this week demanded that the MTA adopt, by Jan. 15, a “code of conduct” to stop board meddling in the agency’s day-to-day operations and draft a plan to build the subway project, which relies partly on federal funds, in the face of a budget shortfall.

Federal officials have become increasingly concerned about the political indecision and turmoil at the MTA, saying it threatens to hurt Los Angeles as Congress considers next year’s allocation of transit funds.

But the board came no closer Wednesday to ending a dispute that has raged for two months over the Eastside contract. The controversy has triggered an MTA inspector general’s investigation and was cited by Drew in his resignation letter.

The debate Wednesday pitted MTA board member and county Supervisor Gloria Molina against her longtime political rival, MTA board member and Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre, and erupted into a nasty exchange. Angry at one point when Alatorre suggested that a member of her staff had attempted to intervene in the Eastside contract process, Molina snapped: “You’re the corrupt politician with bloody fingerprints all over this thing.”

Riordan joined Alatorre in seeking to delay a vote. The mayor said he had not made up his mind about who should receive the lucrative contract but that he wanted to put off a decision in order to explore financial and legal questions about the selection process.

But Molina, joined by county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, pushed for selecting JMA, the business team recommended by an independent panel of experts.

In an interview, Riordan said that before voting on the contract he wants to find out how the MTA plans to pay for the $1-billion Eastside subway extension. “Nobody has shown me that we have the budget for the Eastside line,” he said. He also said he wanted the MTA to review challenges raised to the selection of JMA by its rivals.

Drew originally recommended Metro East Consultants, some of whose executives worked or raised money for Alatorre, even though the firm was ranked third by the expert panel. Drew said JMA was too busy supervising tunneling on the North Hollywood leg of the subway project and had not performed well there.

But Drew withdrew that recommendation last month, saying some of the businesses on the Metro East team had failed to disclose legal troubles and a political contribution to an MTA board member.

In noting that JMA is already working on other troubled subway projects, Alatorre said, “The way we reward somebody for the mistakes that are being made in North Hollywood is to give them another contract.”

Molina and Yaroslavsky warned that any further delays could hurt the agency.

“There is a group here, at the MTA board of directors, that is willing to destroy this agency over this procurement,” Molina said.

The board set a special meeting for Jan. 10 to try to resolve the Eastside contract controversy and decide on the $300-million shift.

Before the vote to delay the decision, Constance Rice, Western regional counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said shifting the funds “could seriously endanger MTA’s ability to carry out its obligation under the [consent] decree” to expand bus service.

The MTA has been considering slowing down subway tunneling because of a projected $1-billion shortfall in the county’s long-range plan due in part to cutbacks in federal aid, increased costs to comply with the court order to expand the bus system and a projected decline in sales tax revenue.