MTA Takes the Stealth Route

The CEO selection process of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board was a civilian use of stealth that the region hardly needed. It was the kind of sneaky, contentious and closed procedure that has become a trademark of this board. And its we-don’t-need-public-discussion attitude has helped the body earn every stinging assault leveled at it from Washington, Sacramento and here at home.

What a contrast between this secretive search and the relatively open and inclusive selection process for the new superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The LAUSD approach, despite its faults, represents the proper way to make an extremely important regional appointment. The MTA board did not even notify the public of one of its closed-door selection sessions. County officials called that a clear violation of state law.

Ultimately, the process wasn’t fair to the person selected as the third chief executive in the MTA’s tumultuous four-year history. Why? Because the new CEO, Theodore “Tad” Weigle Jr., deserved center stage, without the smoky-room, backstage shenanigans of the board.

Weigle presents an intriguing choice for the fractured agency. The Harvard Business School graduate shone as leader or second-in-command in two of the nation’s largest mass transit systems. It’s his work in the private sector that gets mixed reviews and creates some conflict-of-interest concerns.

In the early 1980s, as deputy general manager of the Washington Metro system, Weigle was responsible for day-to-day operations of bus and subway systems. Board members and administrators there credited him for building a solid management team, for his leadership in the expansion and ridership surge in the rail system and for transforming and modernizing a chaotic bus system into one that offered steady and predictable service.

He was lured to Chicago in 1985 by future Transportation Secretary Samuel Skinner to run the nation’s second-largest transit system. Chicago’s was a transit system plagued by bad management and fiscal problems. By the time Weigle left in 1990, a Chicago Tribune editorial was calling for “another Tad Weigle” as his replacement. His performance in Washington and Chicago suggest that Weigle could be a match for Los Angeles’ transit problems.

But he is now a top manager for Bechtel Corp., and he was, for a time, in charge of the infamous $8-billion Central Artery/Third Harbor tunnel project in Boston. That project earned national attention as a money sinkhole. And his most recent role was as Bechtel’s man in charge of building a subway in Athens, Greece, that suffered big cost overruns. Also, Bechtel has large MTA contracts, generating conflict-of-interest concerns no matter what assurances are offered.

That conflict is just one of the slippery slopes Weigle will have to walk as the authority’s CEO. All of them are made steeper by the secretive and inept manner of his choosing by the MTA’s board of directors.