East L.A. Legislators Seek More MTA Funds

Representatives of East Los Angeles declared Thursday that they want even more in subway funding for their districts than what they won the day before in an acrimonious MTA board debate that left San Fernando Valley rail plans a loser.

Pleased that the board voted to seek $44 million to extend the subway deeper into the Eastside, three members of Congress said the area deserves to be first in all future subway funding requests.

Rep. Esteban Torres (D-Pico Rivera) even threatened to block all MTA funding requests throughout the city unless the Eastside gets moved to the front of the line. “The Westside and the Valley aren’t ready,” he said in an interview. “They are holding up the parade.”

The Eastside deserves to be first, he said, because the MTA has already chosen a route for the area and has received federal approval. The Valley and Westside, he asserted, have neither.

Political representatives of the Valley and Westside, meanwhile, appealed for calm, declaring that they believed the MTA had correctly decided Wednesday to seek $158 million in federal funding for rail projects and then, if possible, seek $44 million for the design of an Eastside extension.

But Torres dismissed their suggestions that his section of town should wait. Home on a congressional recess, he said he was inclined to hold up the county’s request for federal transit funding when MTA executives appear before a House transportation appropriations committee in Washington next week unless they acknowledge that the Eastside extension deserves to be built ahead of the others.

After nearly a decade of construction and the expenditure of several billion dollars, representatives of the Eastside see a subway that barely stretches six miles west from downtown to Wilshire Boulevard at Western Avenue. Even when the next two legs of the subway open by 2000 through Hollywood to the east San Fernando Valley, they note, the Eastside will still not have any rail mass transit.

Construction that will begin later this year on a three-mile line east from Union Station to 1st Street at Lorena Avenue is expected to conclude by 2003. But as the total amount of federal money available to build rail in cities across the nation shrinks, the question roiling Los Angeles has centered on what to build next.

The issue has come to the fore this week because a federal funding request covering the next six years is due in Washington by Monday.

Reps. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) and Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles) note that the MTA has long planned to build an extension deeper into the Eastside, terminating at Atlantic Avenue. They noted that county planners have completed final design on the route and received the go-ahead from federal officials to seek construction financing.

In contrast, the representatives observed that the San Fernando Valley has been at odds for years over where to build its east-west rail line, and whether to build it underground or above ground. Why, then, they ask, should it get additional rail design money before the Eastside?

“How can you put a line that’s not even written down on paper as your first priority--it makes no sense,” said Becerra. “That doesn’t mean we don’t construct an east-west Valley line, but let’s move forward for the greater good of Los Angeles and fund a line that is technically and politically ready to move forward.”

County Supervisor and MTA board member Zev Yaroslavsky scoffed at Becerra’s assertion. “They’re not ready--they haven’t even started constructing their first segment yet,” he said.

Yaroslavsky said that he believes the MTA will choose a route and rail technology after environmental impact hearings in the spring, and be ready for the same type of final design funds that his Eastside colleagues are seeking in their district.

They are trying to accelerate Eastside funding, plain and simple, to move ahead of the Valley. “They want to stick it to the Valley if they have the opportunity. Great. We’ll see how that flies.”

Rep. Howard Berman (D-Panorama City) was more gentle, declaring that he did not believe the Eastside was trying to push ahead irresponsibly. “There’s nothing in all of this that makes it a raid on the Valley,” he said.

The main problem, Berman said, was that the MTA’s funding requests “in general are seen as massively unrealistic--more designed to please different constituencies in Los Angeles than to dutifully advise Washington about realistic priorities.”

In an effort to smooth over differences and find a compromise before committee hearings, Roybal-Allard said she was going to attempt to put together a meeting of the entire Los Angeles congressional delegation in Washington on Monday.

“I believe that if we can sit down and talk about this, we will come to a solution that can satisfy all,” she said.

Times staff writer James Bornemeier in Washington contributed to this story.