Davis Fires Caltrans Chief; Chicago Official Appointed

As he prepared to press a plan to significantly expand freeway and mass transit spending in California, Gov. Gray Davis sacked the embattled head of Caltrans late Friday, replacing him with a top official from the Chicago Transit Authority.

Jeff Morales, executive vice president of the Chicago agency, will replace Department of Transportation Director Jose Medina, who gave up a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to take the administration post in December 1998.

Morales, 40, has held his Chicago post since 1997. He has been responsible for implementing a program to make the city’s system of buses and trains more rider-friendly. He has also served in the U.S. Department of Transportation.

“He has the experience and the expertise to get the job done,” Davis said in a statement.

The Chicago Transit Authority operates on a $1.2-billion annual budget. At Caltrans, Morales, whose salary will be $118,524, will be responsible for far more than mass transit. He will oversee a system of trains, ferries, bridges and freeways, plus a budget of more than $7.5 billion and a department with 22,000 employees.

He will be among the officials responsible for advocating Davis’ plan, announced two weeks ago, to place a $2.2-billion transit bond measure on the November ballot and to persuade lawmakers to spend an additional $3 billion from the state budget.

In a statement issued late Friday--after lawmakers had scattered for their spring recess--Davis announced that he is giving Medina, 58, a slot on the Integrated Waste Management Board, at a salary of $113,287.

Medina’s ouster followed a months-long fall capped by an internal audit accusing him of several instances of minor misuse of state property. Much of his problem stemmed from Caltrans’ handling of the state’s only private toll road, along the snarled Riverside Freeway.

“It will be nice to put all of the rumor mills and innuendo and all the speculation about whether Jose was going to stay or not stay behind us,” said state Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Santa Ana) a member of the Senate Transportation Committee.

Dunn and others who have been critical of Caltrans, however, were careful to point out that many of the agency’s problems predated Medina’s time in office.

“A lot of these problems that Jose walked into are problems that have been lingering at Caltrans for a long time, “ said Assemblyman Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana), who heads the Assembly Transportation Committee.

Legislators in February convened a hearing to probe the aborted sale of the private toll road, a deal that fell apart after public outcry over the terms of the sale of the money-losing 91 Express Lanes. Medina had been under criticism since news of the toll lanes’ planned sale surfaced last year.