Torres Holds Key to MTA Funding Deal

The fate of Los Angeles’ epic struggle to re-create a workable mass transit system hung Thursday on the decision of one auto worker-turned-lawmaker, as Rep. Esteban E. Torres weighed the merits of a proposed compromise on federal funding for the perpetually troubled Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

At a meeting Wednesday night, congressional representatives, Mayor Richard Riordan, chairman of the MTA board, and the agency’s acting CEO, Julian Burke, worked toward a compromise that supporters hope would allow the subway to reach North Hollywood and would fund transit improvements on the city’s Eastside. That bargain is designed to mollify Latino elected officials who represent the Eastside and worry that there will not be anything left for their constituents once the MTA reaches the San Fernando Valley.

Under the proposed compromise, the Latino lawmakers would support appropriations to complete the subway, and the agency would seek Washington’s permission to loosen the reins on other money. If federal officials agree to give the MTA greater latitude with that money, the agency would allocate some of it to improving bus service to the Eastside.

That suggestion was offered by Reps. Julian Dixon (D-Los Angeles) and Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles), two moderates eager to find a way out of the increasingly serious and divisive confrontation over MTA funding. But to succeed, the proposal requires Torres’ support. The Pico Rivera Democrat serves on the influential House transportation appropriations subcommittee, and any hesitation on his part could scuttle the agency’s funding request or convince other members of Congress to cut it.

As of Wednesday night, Torres remained cool to the idea, sources said, in part because he--like his Latino colleagues--is upset by a ballot initiative proposed by county supervisor and MTA board member Zev Yaroslavsky to cut off funding for subway construction beyond North Hollywood. If approved, that would leave downtown, Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley with stops but give none to the Eastside, where residents are in serious need of public transportation.

The confrontation has been building for months, but it was triggered in recent weeks by Yaroslavsky’s initiative and by money woes acute even by the MTA’s standards.

Last month, a group of Latino legislators met with Riordan at his City Hall office and warned of their unhappiness at the prospect of a subway cutoff that would leave their constituents without anything to show for their decades of contributions to the MTA construction through their payment of city sales taxes.

At Wednesday’s meeting, some of those same officials renewed that complaint. Led by Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) and county Supervisor Gloria Molina, some of the legislators furiously denounced Yaroslavsky’s proposal. As he has before, Becerra said that if no money can be found for the Eastside, he is prepared to support cutting off MTA’s federal funding altogether.

That would stop the subway construction to North Hollywood, leaving local government with the task of filling in the hole the MTA has dug beneath the Hollywood Hills.

Like Yaroslavsky’s proposal, that suggestion elicits strong emotions, and Wednesday was no exception. According to several people who attended the meeting held behind the closed doors of a committee room in a House of Representatives building on Capitol Hill, it stretched for more than two hours. Sources said it was marked by nasty charges and countercharges, with Molina at one point suggesting that the group summon Yaroslavsky from a nearby meeting.

“Bring him in here, and let the blood be on his hands,” Molina said.

Into that breach stepped Torres, heir to the moral authority of storied Eastside politico Edward Roybal and one of the region’s most respected congressmen. Born in a tent next to the Arizona copper mine where his immigrant father worked, Torres sometimes shows his 10 grandchildren the gang tattoo he acquired as a high school dropout in East L.A.

He went on to work on the auto assembly line in Pico Rivera, became a union activist and, ultimately, the area’s congressional representative. Though he never went to college, Torres speaks five languages.

If Torres fails to accept a compromise solution, some observers believe that the MTA’s federal funding will evaporate. If he agrees, his colleagues will probably go along, and the veteran congressman may pull the MTA back from the brink.

What makes the stakes so high is timing: Congress is preparing to vote on a bill that will decide transportation funding well into the next century.

The federal government has committed to provide about $800 million for completion of the North Hollywood subway extension and construction of subway extensions to the Eastside and Mid-City. That promise was won about a decade ago after fierce lobbying by Los Angeles officials, including Eastside and Mid-City congressional representatives, who supported funding for the project’s initial phases in the belief that their districts one day would receive subway extensions too.

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But Burke, the corporate turnaround specialist brought aboard by Riordan to rescue the MTA, has said there is insufficient money to build the subway extensions in the foreseeable future.

Riordan, seeking to preserve Los Angeles’ hard-fought place in the line for federal funds, has lobbied Washington to lift the restrictions on spending federal money only for subway construction. The mayor, who favors bus improvements, wants the MTA to have the flexibility to spend the money on any mass transit project it chooses.

Complicating matters, as usual, are the politics of the MTA.

Latino elected officials are angry and fearful that even if the MTA has the flexibility to use federal funds for any kind of transit projects, the agency lacks the required local matching money to fund anything other than the North Hollywood subway extension and court-ordered bus improvements.

“The Eastside folks are concerned about MTA building some little busway, planting some trees and saying, ‘That’s your line,’ ” a congressional staff member said.

Despite Torres’ continued indecision, Riordan said he remains optimistic about the recovery efforts. The mayor met with Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater on Thursday, who said he and other Clinton administration officials were impressed by the agency’s efforts to rescue itself. Riordan said he believed that some compromise eventually would be reached on the concerns raised by the Latino elected officials.

“I think this is a thing that’s going to be worked out,” Riordan said.

Dixon, who called Wednesday’s meeting in an attempt to forge a consensus, said he and county Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke agreed to seek authority to spend federal funds on any “fixed guideway” project--perhaps a busway or light-rail line--in their Mid-City districts. But he had no success in bringing his Eastside colleagues into the fold.

“They’re just not prepared to bite the bullet,” he said. “But when you have a very transit-dependent community, something may be better than nothing.

“I can’t say that we will build anything, but at least we ought to explore some ways of getting federal money, and we can’t do that unless we have permission to look at something other than subway at the moment.”

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Supervisor Burke remained hopeful. “We’ll keep talking.”

The Latino officials met with Yaroslavsky on Thursday in the Capitol dining room, asking him to reconsider the initiative. The lawmakers are concerned that the measure would foreclose subway tunneling on the Eastside, “even if it’s the only option that makes sense.” Torres said he would be talking further with the supervisor in the next few days.

“It hasn’t been ruled out that they can reach an agreement,” a Torres aide said. “But at this point there is none.”

Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre, the political leader in the fight to secure federal funding for the Eastside subway extension, has been noticeably absent from negotiations. Alatorre has been hampered by health problems and a federal investigation into his activities.

While Riordan lobbied hard in Washington to gain greater flexibility in how the MTA could spend about $800 million in federal transportation funds, state officials in Sacramento moved to exert greater control over the transit authority.

The California Transportation Commission notified the MTA that the agency’s efforts to modify a proposed agreement with the state over its funding was unacceptable.

“They can either sign what we have submitted to them, or if they don’t sign, we won’t give Los Angeles County any money, period,” said Commissioner David Fleming.

The commission and the MTA have been attempting to reach agreement on a plan that would preserve about $400 million in funding to Los Angeles County in return for the transit agency coming up with a plan to provide transit improvements to the Eastside, Mid-City, Pasadena and the San Fernando Valley.

Newton reported from Washington and Simon from Los Angeles.