Politicians Try to Get the MTA Out of Its Jam

Super-tough CEO to run troubled Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Must be faster than a speeding train, more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap political minefields. Salary negotiable, but up to $235,000 was authorized for a previous candidate. People with boats need not apply.

Would anyone who is any good really want the top job at the MTA, even at the highest salary paid by any public transit agency in the nation, unless changes are made in the politically fractious 13-member board?

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, chairman of that board, thinks the answer is “no.”

He has backed state legislation to strip the board of high-profile politicians and to replace them with a smaller, mostly appointed panel--a move that Riordan regards as crucial to attract a permanent chief executive officer capable of turning the MTA around. But the proposed legislative reform has been put off for consideration until next year. The bill’s authors, Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblyman Steve Kuykendall (R-Long Beach), need more time to round up votes in the face of heavy lobbying by the MTA and Los Angeles County supervisors to defeat the bill.

An aide to Riordan, who has made board restructuring a centerpiece of his chairmanship, said last week that the legislation could wait until next year now that crisis management specialist Julian Burke has been brought in as the agency’s acting chief.

Still, Riordan has said that removing elected officials from the board will take the politics out of the MTA.

Critics say it will just hide the politics.

“One of the reasons that some of the decision-makers want off the board is that they are being held accountable for some of the bonehead decisions being made there,” said former Assemblyman Richard Katz, who wrote the legislation creating the MTA.

The 13-member board is composed of Los Angeles’ mayor and three of his appointees, the five supervisors and four officials from other cities around the county.

Polanco has changed the legislation six times in search of a compromise, and at every turn, some group has objected that the composition of the board would weaken its power over transportation decisions. A position on the board, which awards millions of dollars in contracts, also can be a lucrative lure for campaign contributions to a member.

One bill called for a board directly elected by voters. The latest version called for a nine-member panel, made up of three appointees each of the mayor and Board of Supervisors, and three representatives of the county’s smaller cities.

Riordan contends that political infighting has kept the agency from pursuing a common transportation vision for the region. Federal officials also have decried the board’s meddling in the MTA’s day-to-day operations.

The legislation also would free Riordan from the burden of presiding over circus-like meetings, enduring a seemingly never-ending string of political embarrassments and worrying about the egos of other board members.

Like Katz, the county supervisors argue that the legislation would reduce accountability to the public.

They say, for example, that the last CEO candidate’s demands for compensation to make up for financial losses from the sale of his boat would never have been made public and may even have been approved if there had been no elected officials on the board.

“The fact that you had elected officials who knew what the public reaction would be to something like that was the reason why it didn’t happen,” Katz said.

Opponents of the legislation say it also would allow the mayor to remain a power at the MTA, while using appointees to shield himself from blame for unpopular decisions.

The MTA was created barely 4 1/2 years ago, partly in response to criticism that the boards of the Southern California Rapid Transit District and county Transportation Commission lacked accountability. Elected officials sometimes sat on those boards, but sometimes appointed aides or supporters to attend meetings and make decisions on their behalf.

A study by Riordan’s office of the nation’s 25 largest transit agencies found that the “best performing” boards are appointed. The study concluded that removing elected officials eliminates “tit-for-tat voting, perceptions of inappropriate influence on the contract-approval process and public grandstanding.”

An MTA consultant, Coopers & Lybrand, last year also recommended a smaller board of non-elected officials, saying: “Elected officials tend to place their more narrow, short-term political interests ahead of the broader, long-term business interests of the agency.”

The accounting and consulting firm recommended that appointees be highly qualified “and not just be a product of a patronage process.”

One feature of New York’s 17-member MTA board that no one has proposed here is the presence of a non-voting riders’ representative on the panel. Nor has anyone suggested that board members, in order to gain a better understanding of transportation needs, be required to rely on public transit to get around town.

No matter what, there will be changes at the MTA.

A bill sponsored by Assembly Transportation Committee Chairman Kevin Murray (D-Los Angeles) and recently signed into law eliminates the board’s alternates--generally anonymous appointees who sat in for absent board members and gave the CE0 26 bosses. The bill, which becomes effective Jan. 1, also establishes a four-year term for the CEO, subject to removal only by a two-thirds majority vote of the board.

Richard Simon can be reached at richard.simon@latimes.com