MTA Will Contest Order to Buy Buses

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted Monday to continue its lengthy legal challenge of a 5-year-old federal court order that requires the agency to buy hundreds of buses to reduce overcrowding and improve service to the poor.

The vote by the board of the giant transit agency sparked the anger of the organized bus riders, particularly since one of their chief backers on the board, Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn, was out of town and did not vote.

Eight of the 13 MTA board members voted to continue to fight an order to buy 248 new buses immediately, despite a recent decision by a panel of judges from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ordering the transit agency to do so.

“We are going to seek a rehearing,” said John Fasana, chairman of the board, in a short briefing with reporters after the closed-door vote. “We feel we have to.”

MTA board members said they still want further judicial review, despite a string of setbacks--first from a special mediator, then a federal judge and finally, two weeks ago, from the federal appellate panel. The board said it needed more direction about how to properly calculate overcrowding and protection from a bus purchase order that could leave the agency with too little money to pay for rail, freeway and other projects, Fasana said.

“We need clarification from the courts in terms of the real scope of the consent decree,” said Fasana, a Duarte city councilman.

The decision means that the MTA will ask for the 9th Circuit to rehear the case--either by resubmitting the case to the three-judge panel or to a larger group of the appellate court’s judges. The MTA’s final avenue of appeal would then be to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Echoing the long-held position of the MTA board, Fasana expressed concern that courts were too intrusive and had overly involved themselves in the daily operation of the transit agency. The MTA chairman, the only member of the board to comment, also claimed that the transit agency is adhering to the court order. He claimed that the MTA recently put 160 new buses into operation and that, in the next few weeks, it would put 88 more on the road. “The remaining 88 buses will move us to 248,” he said.

That assessment and many others made by the agency were contested by activists representing bus riders.

Eric Mann--founder of the grass-roots Bus Riders Union, which launched the legal campaign against the MTA with a discrimination lawsuit--had a simple response: “They are liars!”

“The MTA is playing a shell game, a numbers game,” said Mann of the MTA’s contention that it is nearing the court-ordered purchase of 248 buses. “They can say whatever they want to say, but they have no new buses to offer.”

Mann said the board was maintaining current levels of service--replacing an aging fleet of buses with new, clean-fuel vehicles.

Visibly upset after the announcement, Mann said he was tired of the transit agency’s stubbornness. He called on the MTA to immediately add 102 buses to the order for 248, as required in one of the early directives from the court.

The appellate panel two weeks ago ordered the purchase of new buses, above the base fleet of about 2,000 that the agency maintains.

Shortly after the announcement that the board would appeal, a small crowd of the Bus Riders Union activists commiserated outside MTA headquarters, vowing to press forward. The activists said the MTA’s repeated stalling has subverted the agreement it reached to settle the lawsuit five years ago. “This is as mad as I’ve ever been, just disgusted,” said Mann.

Hahn’s performance, or lack of one, further antagonized proponents of the bus purchase plan. The mayor pledged during this year’s election to drop the protracted legal appeals and begin buying the 248 buses. With his vote on the board and those of his three appointees, the mayor is positioned to be a force on the agency.

But Hahn already has lost a fight over the placement of a busway in the San Fernando Valley. Some transit experts viewed Monday’s vote as a test of the new mayor’s leadership.

The mayor’s voice, however, was not heard. Hahn, traveling to Washington on a lobbying trip, did not participate in the closed door meeting and did not vote, though he could have done so by phone. Instead, Deputy Mayor Brian Williams read a prepared statement to the board in which the mayor asked its members to back down.

“We are definitely angered at the mayor,” said Mann. “But we are much more angry at the board, who are disregarding civil rights and not standing behind an agreement they signed. Hahn should have been there. But at least he is the first mayor to go on record in support of dropping the appeal.”

Williams defended Hahn, saying the mayor was in Washington lobbying for transportation money. “Ultimately, the mayor believes we will end up in the same place,” Williams said of the vote on the appeal. “We believe the court will not take on the appeal. . . . This vote isn’t the end all.”

Among the MTA board members voting to continue the legal fight were Los Angeles County Supervisors Mike Antonovich, Gloria Molina, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Don Knabe.

Voting against continuing the legal fight were two of the three board members appointed by Hahn, Allison Yoh and Paul Hudson. Abstaining were Hahn, Lancaster Mayor Frank C. Roberts and county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

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Times Staff Writer Jeffrey L. Rabin contributed to this report.