Pasadena Rail Effort Assailed

County supervisors and Metropolitan Transportation Authority board members Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Zev Yaroslavsky launched a stinging attack Thursday on the new Pasadena rail authority, warning that the MTA will not bail out the $818-million rail project.

Burke seized on the choice of veteran engineering company executive Larry E. Miller as one of the Pasadena agency’s acting chief executives as a sign of future trouble on the 13.6-mile rail line between Union Station and Pasadena.

The MTA’s contract with the executive’s company, Gannett Fleming Inc., was canceled more than a year ago after costs on the Pasadena rail line spiraled out of control.

“The good news for us is that the people who got us into trouble over here are now over there,” Burke said at an MTA committee meeting.

Yaroslavsky called it “unacceptable” and “crazy” that Gannett Fleming will be able to bid on the very contracts whose specifications it establishes for the new agency.

Warning of what he believes are blatant conflicts of interest within the new agency, Yaroslavsky sharply criticized Miller and San Gabriel Valley transportation consultant Sharon Neely, who also is working on the Pasadena project.

That prompted MTA board member John Fasana, a Duarte city councilman, to accuse Yaroslavsky of engaging in “character assassination.”

As the two sides exchanged rhetorical fire, Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre urged his colleagues on the MTA’s executive management committee to let the new Pasadena agency do its job of building the rail line.

“They have the responsibility to oversee it and get it done,” Alatorre said. “I just hope we will not be in the business of meddling in their business.”

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who is chairman of the MTA, said the county transit agency inevitably will be called upon to cover deficits in the Pasadena rail project. “We’re very, very naive if we think overruns there are not coming out of MTA’s pocket,” he said. Riordan added that he still thinks the Pasadena line is “a great project.”

Bus Riders Union organizer Martin Hernandez said the MTA should not transfer funds to the new Pasadena agency when the money could be used to meet the needs of MTA bus riders.

“You shouldn’t give to these people any money,” Hernandez said. “There is going to be a deficit. You know what it costs to pay for these rail lines and the kinds of cost overruns that are going to be happening with this thing. You know it and I know it.”

Late in the day, Pasadena City Councilman Paul Little, who is chairman of the new rail authority, said his agency is not the MTA and will control costs as it builds the rail line.

He defended the choice of Miller and former Southern California Rapid Transit District general manager John Dyer as acting chief executive officers of the new authority.

“We hired people who are competent and aware of the project and going to see that it is completed without regard to who their friends might be or where political contributions may be scattered around,” Little said.

The councilman said in Pasadena that the new agency’s board doesn’t need MTA board members telling them how to run the show.

“The reality is the project was taken away from the MTA,” Little said. “The intent and mission of the board is to lay track. We don’t need to get mired in the political mudslinging that has crippled the MTA.”

The renewed tug of war over the Pasadena line comes a year after the MTA halted the light rail project and two subway extensions to the Eastside and Mid-City area.

Burke made it clear that she thinks the stalled subway extension to the Eastside is a higher priority than the Pasadena project.

Both she and Yaroslavsky demanded monthly reports on what the Pasadena agency is doing and whether it jeopardizes other MTA projects. And she said there should be strict auditing of any spending by the new entity.

At the moment, the MTA is completing construction of the Metro Rail subway to Hollywood and North Hollywood. Once that is finished, the agency’s rail construction program will end, unless the subway extensions are reinstated.

That would be far more difficult since the passage of a November ballot measure authored by Yaroslavsky that outlaws use of the county’s transit sales tax for new subways, including the Eastside and Mid-City lines.

Yaroslavsky was adamant that Miller should not have been chosen as acting chief executive officer for the Pasadena line and said he does not trust Miller to head the project.

Little said the Pasadena authority’s board was told during a telephone conference call Wednesday night with Miller and Dyer that Gannett Fleming is interested in bidding on a contract for “some oversight activities.” Only the authority’s board members will decide who gets the contracts for the rail line, Little said.

Miller was returning to Los Angeles and could not be reached for comment.