Robbing MTA to Pay Whom?

Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon last week proposed hijacking money earmarked for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority so the Los Angeles Police Department could build new stations in the San Fernando Valley and Mid-City. The goal: Divert money intended for rail projects that may never get built toward paying for a few sorely needed police stations.

That the MTA comes across most often as a bungling elephant goes without saying. So does the fact that the men and women who protect Los Angeles work in aging, overcrowded facilities.

Yet the MTA’s fumbling and bumbling stems largely from the politicians responsible for running it--yet who so often don’t. Rather than work together to find reasonable solutions to the region’s long-term transportation problems, this bunch spends its time whipping the agency in public as it bleeds the MTA in private.

Holding back city commitments to the MTA sounds attractive--especially when the money might be used to put cops where they’re needed. But the MTA will never be anything but a laughingstock--and the region’s roads anything but impassable--unless those holding the purse strings stop yanking them for political ends.