MTA Gets $50-Million Surprise From White House to Improve Bus Service

The federal budget President Clinton unveiled Monday included a surprise request of $50 million to help the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority relieve overcrowding on its troubled bus system.

The budget also contains a laundry list of other proposals to benefit California, such as money to start building a federal courthouse in Los Angeles, to buy parkland in the Santa Monica Mountains and to preserve Southern California desert land.

But it was the $50 million request for the MTA to buy buses--one-tenth of the $529 million available nationwide for such purchases--that stunned even the transit agency’s supporters on Capitol Hill.

It also surprised Eric Mann, director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles, plaintiff in a civil rights lawsuit that produced a federal court order in 1996 requiring the MTA to improve its bus system. “You’re kidding,” Mann said upon learning of the budget request. “That’s very encouraging.”

The lawsuit accused the MTA of neglecting poor and minority bus riders while building rail lines that primarily serve more affluent riders.

The budget now goes to Congress, which has not always been friendly to Clinton or California in the past. Last year, the MTA received only $3 million to buy buses.

But gas tax revenue, some of which are set aside for mass transit, are projected to be $3 billion higher than expected this year. Additionally, Clinton only singled out the MTA and two other projects for special funding, leaving most of the $529 million for Congress to divvy up.

Still, MTA officials reacted cautiously to the good news, issuing a terse statement saying that “the MTA appreciates the administration’s continued support.”

The $50 million, which would buy about 140 buses, was requested by the MTA, according to federal officials. Most of the new buses would replace aging and often unreliable vehicles.

The agency operates about 2,000 buses during rush hours.

The MTA’s request may have benefited from fortunate political timing. The March 7 California primary looms as a critical contest for Vice President Al Gore in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. In the November election, the state will have fully one-fifth of the electoral votes needed to win the White House.

But Nuria Fernandez, acting administrator of the Federal Transit Administration, said her agency supported the MTA funding because it sees a “critical need . . . to have sufficient environmentally friendly buses on the street to provide the services that the riders in Los Angeles demand.”

Clinton’s budget also provides $242 million for other California transit projects, including:

* $50 million for extending the Los Angeles subway to North Hollywood;

* $65 million for the Mission Valley East transit project in San Diego;

* $80 million for extending the Bay Area Rapid Transit system to San Francisco International Airport;

* $35 million to complete a light rail line in the Sacramento area.

“For urban areas, it’s a positive budget,” said Jim Seeley, a lobbyist in Washington for the city of Los Angeles.

The spending blueprint also calls for $15 million to purchase more than 200,000 acres of Southern California desert land, completing one of the largest purchases of its kind in California history. The government wants the land for recreational use and to preserve habitat for the desert tortoise and other species.

Also in the budget: $32 million to begin work on constructing a new federal courthouse in Los Angeles, $4.4 million for Santa Monica Mountains parkland acquisition and $27 million for repairs and alterations to the Santa Ana courthouse.

The Clinton administration also wants to spend $117 million for construction of a prison at Victorville and $130 million for detention of immigration detainees at Lompoc. Another $800,000 would be set aside for immigration facility construction in San Pedro.

The budget would provide $600 million, a $15-million increase, to reimburse state and local governments for the cost of jailing illegal immigrants. California receives a large chunk of this money.

The budget got mixed reviews in California’s congressional delegation.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat who is up for reelection this year, expressed disappointment that the budget did not include more money for restoration of Lake Tahoe. She asked for $30 million; the budget includes $3 million. She said she would be seeking additional funding from Congress.

Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas) criticized the administration for failing to address other local projects, such as improvements in streets affected by increased freight train traffic in the San Gabriel Valley and cleanup of polluted San Gabriel Basin ground water.