Caltrans Chief Defends Decisions on Riverside Freeway Toll Lanes

Caltrans Director Jose Medina, under fire for his handling of an Orange County toll road deal, on Tuesday for the first time defended his decision to quietly settle a lawsuit that postponed improvements to the notoriously snarled Riverside Freeway.

Medina appeared before a panel of lawmakers who demanded to know why the state Department of Transportation agreed to delay construction of extra lanes on a hazardous stretch of the freeway, as well as why Medina approved a controversial sale of the tollway along the freeway to a nonprofit group.

“I feel that I made the right decision in both instances, given the advice and recommendation that was given to me,” Medina said. “I do not want to second-guess myself.”

During the joint legislative hearing, he and his top assistants were grilled by lawmakers who challenged their decisions to abandon safety improvements on the Riverside Freeway and to settle a $100-million lawsuit brought by the private toll lanes’ operator in March 1999.

State Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer said he saw nothing improper on Caltrans’ part in settling the lawsuit, which cleared the way for the toll road operators to potentially make $70 million to $90 million on the sale.

“There might be some debate about wisdom, but I see no impropriety,” Lockyer said. “But it seems to me they didn’t put up much of a fight.”

Medina has been under criticism since news of the toll lanes’ sale surfaced last year, and the deal has since been scrapped. Gov. Gray Davis offered his first public assessment Tuesday of the Caltrans chief, whom he appointed in December 1998 to lead the agency’s more than 20,000 employees and oversee its $8-billion budget.

“He has done some good things. He has made some mistakes,” Davis said at a news conference on another subject. The governor declined to comment on Medina’s future, saying that he hasn’t had time to focus on whether the Caltrans chief should remain in his job.

The legislative hearing, which lasted more than five hours and was attended by 20 senators and Assembly members, was aimed at getting to the bottom of the toll road deal. But it also sparked a full-scale debate about the wisdom of having private toll roads at all.

In particular, legislators criticized the 1993 agreement signed by Caltrans that led to “non-compete clauses,” which forbade the state to make improvements on the adjacent freeway lanes and prompted the lawsuit that Medina settled.

Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge) suggested that the state condemn the tollway, buy the franchise rights and open the lanes for all to use free.

“It is a state-sanctioned monopoly,” McClintock said of the toll operation. “If we allow it to continue, then we are creating a new generation of robber barons.”

Lockyer and others were just as harsh. Construction of the toll lanes was “a mistake. It was a terrible policy, and we shouldn’t continue down that road,” he said. “When you make people stop and take out money, I regard that as a polite form of highway robbery.”

State Sen. Kevin Murray (D-Culver City) agreed.

“In the final analysis, this whole toll road thing is a scam,” he said. “I wish that I could come up with a more statesmanlike way to describe this, but I really can’t.”

Murray said legislators convinced themselves a decade ago that private entrepreneurs were needed to build roads, since the state didn’t have the money.

But he said the experiment backfired quickly and called it “horribly stupid, misadvised and [bordering on the] moronic.”

Assemblyman Rod Pacheco (R-Riverside) urged lawmakers not to reject a buyout too quickly.

He said he is sponsoring legislation to form a new agency--overseen by officials from Riverside and Orange counties--to issue bonds and buy the lanes from California Private Transportation Co., the tollway operator.

A delegation from Riverside County echoed Pacheco’s concerns, calling the toll road experiment “reckless” and saying that it endangered thousands of Riverside County commuters every day.

Greg Hulsizer, general manager of the private group, which has argued that the toll lanes have led to a decrease in accidents, said the lanes are for sale but the firm isn’t looking for a state purchase.

He said the group erred by “hunkering down” and not answering questions when the deal became a firestorm of controversy.

“Obviously, we’ve learned a very tough lesson here about being a private partner,” Hulsizer said, adding that his group “fully supports legitimate safety improvements on the 91 Freeway.”

He said Pacheco’s idea of a new agency to buy the lanes might work out unless “it would be used to drive down the price. Then, no, we’re not interested.”

Times staff writer Dan Morain contributed to this story.