East L.A. Legislators Seek Transit Fund Edge

Representatives of East Los Angeles declared Thursday that they want higher priority in potential subway funding for their districts than they won the day before in an acrimonious MTA board debate that appeared to leave San Fernando Valley rail plans in jeopardy.

Although pleased that the board voted to seek $44 million to help extend the subway deeper into the Eastside, three members of Congress said that the area deserves to be ahead of the Valley and Westside in subway funding requests.

Rep. Esteban Torres (D-Pico Rivera), who is a member of the House Appropriations Committee, even threatened to vote against all Metropolitan Transportation Authority funding requests throughout the county unless the Eastside gets moved to the front of the line. “If the Valley isn’t ready and can’t get ready . . . why should the Eastside go to the back of the line and get nothing?” he asked.

The Eastside merits funding priority, he said, because the MTA has already selected a route for the area as well as received federal approval and environmental clearances. The Valley and Westside, he asserted, have not.

Political representatives of the Valley and Westside, meanwhile, appealed for calm, asserting that they believe the MTA had correctly decided Wednesday to ask Congress for $158 million for rail projects in their areas by 2003 and then, if possible, seek the additional $44 million for the design of an Eastside extension.

But Torres dismissed their suggestions that the Eastside should be last in line.

After nearly a decade of construction and the expenditure of several billion dollars, representatives of the Eastside see a subway that barely stretches five 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 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 in Boyle Heights is expected to conclude by 2004. But as the total amount of federal money available to build rail lines in cities across the nation shrinks, the question roiling MTA board members 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 Tuesday.

Reps. Xavier Becerra and Lucille Roybal-Allard, both Los Angeles Democrats, note that the MTA has long planned to build an extension deeper into the Eastside, terminating at Atlantic and Whitter boulevards. They said county planners have completed preliminary designs on the route and received approval from federal officials to seek construction financing.

In contrast, the representatives observed that the 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,” Becerra said. “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.”

MTA board member and county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said he believes that the MTA will choose a route across the Valley after environmental impact hearings in the spring and be ready for the same type of final design funds that his Eastside colleagues are seeking.

“They are trying to accelerate Eastside funding, plain and simple, to move ahead of the Valley,” he said. “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 find a compromise before committee hearings, Roybal-Allard said she would try to organize a meeting of the Los Angeles congressional delegation by early next week.

Without some unity in the delegation, MTA board member and county Supervisor Gloria Molina warned, Los Angeles could lose out to Portland, Ore., and other cities in the competition for future rail funds.

Rep. Julian Dixon (D-Culver City), who has been a strong advocate of the subway, said he believes that a compromise is possible. “No one is entirely happy, but I do think that all the communities should benefit. . . . I understand the nervousness of the Valley, but they have to accelerate their process to get the kind of rail system they want.”

Times staff writer Jeffrey L. Rabin contributed to this story.