More MTA Bumbling

You’d almost need a code breaker to decrypt the confused and contradictory motion passed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board last Wednesday in response to federal Judge Terry J. Hatter’s tough ruling against the agency in the landmark civil rights case that has mandated better bus service for poor riders.

Go back five years, when the Bus Riders Union, the Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference filed a federal lawsuit against the MTA. The plaintiffs argued the MTA was bankrolling subway and rail construction on the backs of transit-dependent riders crowded onto dilapidated buses. Move on to October 1996, when the MTA decided to settle the suit and agreed on a special master to handle the case and to accept his role in ensuring compliance. The MTA also agreed to specific timetables to reduce overcrowding on its buses.

Enter 1999 and the MTA’s ill-considered move to contest not only the special master’s authority in the matter but that of Judge Hatter as well. Predictably, Hatter last month backed the special master, Donald Bliss, and ordered the MTA to immediately acquire 248 more buses, above the 2,095 that the MTA has promised to buy.

So now it’s the MTA board and Hatter. The transportation board agrees to buy the 248 buses and agrees that Hatter’s ruling is fair, and board Chairman Yvonne Brathwaite Burke says “we’re going to do most of the things he’s saying.”

But the board also voted to appeal the crucial issue of whether Hatter and the federal courts had any right to dictate how the MTA complies with the 1996 consent decree. So the MTA is agreeing to the consent decree yet still fighting it at its most basic level.

At this rate, the MTA can only expect a heavier hand from the court. And it’s difficult even to ponder the agency’s best path for the future when its fiscal moves are so utterly confusing and contradictory. For instance, the MTA once said it didn’t have the money to buy any buses beyond the agreed-upon 2,095. Then in August the board signed off on $61.3 million in “discovered” money to handle workers’ compensation claims.

So, now, when the MTA concedes that it does have the money for the 248 buses after all, few are surprised, or should be. But eyes roll when the agency claims it doesn’t know where it will get the $97 million needed to operate those buses.

The board has no one to blame but itself for the county’s atmosphere of weary impatience. Don’t be surprised if the court eventually orders a thorough financial review to get to the bottom of this, as well it should.