Acting Chief Seeks to Reassure MTA Staff

In his first major remarks since taking over as chief executive officer of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Julian Burke sought Wednesday to reassure the troubled transit agency’s employees that they do not work for the most troubled organization he has confronted in a long career as a corporate turnaround specialist.

“I have seen organizations that were at least in as much difficulty and strain, if not more so,” Burke said, assessing the challenge that lies before him.

The 70-year-old attorney, who helped clean up the Teamsters’ corrupt Central States Pension Fund, helped restore the Penn Central railroad to health, and aided in the revival of two major insurance companies, said his primary mission now is to stabilize the MTA’s deficit-ridden finances. And that, he hinted, may mean tightening the agency’s operations and staff.

In an extended talk transmitted to MTA offices and bus facilities across the region, Burke said repeatedly that before the MTA’s credibility can be rebuilt, he must “bring immediate stability and control to MTA finances.”

Although a task force convened by Los Angeles Mayor and MTA board Chairman Richard Riordan found that the agency is running a budget deficit of at least $29 million and perhaps double that, Burke said, “I don’t know what the bottom line of the financial condition is at this moment.”

He added that he is still trying to determine precisely what resources the MTA needs to complete construction of the subway to North Hollywood and to improve bus service in compliance with a federal court order.

“That seems to be a given and an essential,” he said.

Another top priority is producing a new recovery plan for the federal government, which has rejected the agency’s two previous attempts to detail its finances and plans for completing the existing Red Line subway, let alone extending it to the Eastside, Mid-City area and across the San Fernando Valley.

“I don’t yet have any view as to how much of the remaining planned rail program will be able to be accomplished or over what time period it can be accomplished,” he said.

With widespread apprehension about what the future holds, the first question put to Burke by MTA employees was simple and direct: Will there be layoffs?

“I don’t see an immediate huge layoff of any kind, but I think there will be some need to tighten and reduce expenses,” he said.

Burke signaled that there will be some changes in the agency’s vast management and organizational structure. “The organization needs tightening,” he said. “It needs to be better directed.”

He discounted rampant rumors that he has plans to shake up the agency’s upper echelons. “I don’t specifically have in mind a hit list. I don’t know if I even need a hit list.”

Looking back on his career as a crisis manager and corporate turnaround specialist with the Palmieri Co., Burke said his style in running troubled companies is “not to slash and burn, but to settle down the organization.”

And he pleaded for MTA employees to assist him in that task. “If you work with me to bring credibility back to this organization, I will work with you to bring stability back to your workplace.”

In a brief display of humor, Burke wondered aloud “how I got stuck with this job,” which pays $15,000 a month.

He recalled that Riordan first asked him to assist in the MTA budget task force. “I was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he joked.

Then, after New York City transit executive Michael C. Ascher became the mayor’s latest choice for the MTA’s top slot to turn the job down, Riordan called and asked for help in dealing with the chaos at the agency. Burke agreed.

“Now I have doubts about my own wisdom,” he said.

“I am 70 years young. I do not need this job. I did not apply for it,” Burke said. And in a thinly veiled reference to Ascher, who wanted the MTA to pay him for financial losses on sale of his boat if he took the transit job, Burke joked: “I don’t have a yacht.”