85 to Lose Jobs in MTA Downsizing

The long-anticipated day of reckoning officially dawned at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Thursday, when the troubled agency’s normally fractious board listened silently as their new chief executive officer announced that 85 employees will be immediately laid off and an equal number of vacant positions eliminated to “conserve” the agency’s financial assets.

Julian Burke, a corporate turnaround specialist personally recruited by Mayor Richard Riordan, the chairman of the agency’s board, said he was eliminating the jobs as a first step toward closing a $40-million to $50-million hole in the MTA’s operating budget.

The laid-off nonunion employees will receive a severance package when they are handed their pink slips in two weeks.

Under pressure from Washington to get the MTA’s tangled finances in order, Burke also called a special board meeting for next month to deal with hard choices about closing the agency’s operating deficit. That meeting will be followed by a special session in December to confront a capital funding crisis that threatens to derail a construction program that already has been scaled back to a single Metro Rail subway extension to the Eastside and a light rail line from Union Station to Pasadena.

In a further sign that downsizing has begun in earnest, the board ignored the objections of its own police union and overwhelmingly approved a contract with Los Angeles Police Department that will take the MTA out of the transit policing business.

The agency will sign a five-year contract with the LAPD to provide police protection beginning Nov. 23 for the Red Line subway and all MTA bus routes within Los Angeles’ city limits.

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The long-discussed move again drew sharp criticism from MTA police union representatives concerned about a variety of personnel issues, including the failure of 45 MTA officers to pass background checks by the LAPD.

Beginning Nov. 2, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies will begin policing the Metro Blue and Green lines and buses operating outside the city.

In another cost-cutting move, the MTA board voted to give Burke the authority to reduce the commission paid to retail outlets that sell monthly and weekly bus passes and discount tokens.

Advocates for bus riders warned that such a move would violate a federal court order to improve bus service if it makes it harder to find places that sell the passes used by 42% of riders.

The MTA’s budget adopted last summer anticipated a $2.8-million savings by reducing the commission paid to vendors effective July 1. If the reduction takes effect by Nov. 1, the savings would be $1.7 million, leaving a deficit--from this item alone--of $1.1 million.

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Eric Mann, director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center, a plaintiff in the civil rights lawsuit that led to the consent decree, said he left the MTA meeting feeling good about the board’s instruction to Burke to try to lower the commission without reducing the availability of the passes and tokens.

MTA officials contend that the MTA pays its 700 vendors a higher commission rate than most other transit agencies.

In a sign that some board members are already thinking what had been unthinkable until recently, Los Angeles County Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Gloria Molina sharply questioned a restructuring of MTA’s insurance coverage.

The two board members wanted to know how much the agency would save on the insurance package if the MTA does not build the billion-dollar subway extension to the Eastside.

Anticipating the coming showdown over the operating budget and capital budget for future rail projects, Councilman Richard Alatorre requested a five-year history of “how much we’ve had to bail out operations.”

The board once again postponed a discussion of the issue of construction safety despite the deaths of three workers this year--the first fatalities in the 10-year history of subway construction.

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Pat Chiodo, a safety engineer who once worked for MTA contractors, told a few board members at the end of the five-hour meeting that the agency must come to terms with worker safety problems.

He noted that the agency already has been sued for $50 million by the family of Jaime Pasillas, who was crushed to death in the first fatal accident, and similar lawsuits are expected in the other two deaths.

The board also voted to work with Metrolink officials in studying the feasibility of running trains from the Chatsworth train station to Warner Center and from North Hollywood to Burbank and Glendale.

Board members also voted to establish a “working group” to explore ways to improve bus service in the Valley and “giving the Valley more control over its bus services.”