Key L.A. Official Backs Move to Break Up MTA

The focus of the political drive to break off an independent San Fernando Valley transit system shifted abruptly Friday as a top Los Angeles official moved to embrace a regional pact that would pursue the proposal.

Chief Legislative Analyst Ron Deaton, who had bottled up the proposal, reluctantly recommended that the city join the county and eight cities in pursuing a split from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Deaton had been pressed by Councilwoman Laura Chick and County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, among others, to relinquish his stranglehold on the issue.

City Council members had been waiting for Deaton to complete his analysis and recommendation before acting on the proposal.

Despite his written advice, Deaton insisted that a breakaway district had yet to prove it can survive financially. He suggested the council reconsider in a year, and pull out of the joint powers authority--the group considering the breakaway plan--unless a transit district is viable.

Deaton said a Valley zone would face a deficit of $70 million over the next three years if it is forced to accept a proposal by the MTA. The MTA has offered to pay $69 per hour per bus for services it would turn over to the new agency.

“This is the most serious challenge to the zone’s feasibility,” Deaton wrote in a report to the council Friday. “Clearly . . . if this gap cannot be closed, there cannot be a San Fernando Valley Transit Zone.”

On Wednesday, Yaroslavsky wrote to Los Angeles officials, complaining that the city’s refusal to sign on was “the only thing holding up progress” in the effort to dismantle the MTA.

Chick said she was prepared to force the issue in the council had Deaton not acted.

The council’s top advisor said he was recommending the city join “to accommodate other member agencies” and to make sure that other cities share part of the $140,000 cost for a financial study on the MTA’s subsidy proposal.

“I’m pleased,” Yaroslavsky said of Deaton’s action. “For the Valley Transit Zone to work, it is going to require the city’s involvement.”

First proposed two years ago, the idea of a Valley Transit Zone has been bogged down in financial negotiations and politics. State legislation that would have doomed the idea by requiring the zone to match wages and benefits paid by the MTA was vetoed by Gov. Gray Davis in early October, giving the proposal new life.

At issue is how much the MTA is willing to pay for the services it will no longer provide. Consultants for the agency estimate the MTA is spending $103 per hour per bus on its Valley service, but that the zone could provide the service for about $88 per hour.

Yaroslavsky and Chick said Friday they believe the joint powers authority will be able to find a way to make the Valley Transit Zone financially feasible.

“It has worked in other areas, including the San Gabriel Valley. I don’t know see why we can’t make it work in the San Fernando Valley,” Chick said.

The officials said poor bus service provided to the Valley by the MTA is an incentive to make it work.

“The agency there now is not meeting the mass-transit needs of the San Fernando Valley,” Chick said.