CONGRESS CUTS SUBWAY FUNDING.

Byline: Chip Jacobs Daily News Staff Writer

In what Mayor Richard Riordan termed ``a stinging blow,'' Congress voted Wednesday to spend $70 million on Los Angeles' subway project this year - a move that could slow completion of Metro Rail.

The Clinton administration had requested $158.9 million for construction on the troubled Metro Rail job, but the House-Senate conference committee decided to finance less than half that amount.

It was the third consecutive year the Metropolitan Transportation Authority received less federal money for the $5.8 billion subway project than officials had sought.

``It's not been a good day,'' said Metropolitan Transportation Authority board chairman Larry Zarian. ``But with all the other cities competing for scarce federal dollars, we'll have to accept what Congress has given us. If this trend continues, projects will be delayed and gridlock will get worse.''

The committee's vote, however, is not expected to impact the scheduled year 2000 opening of the Metro Rail's North Hollywood leg because construction of the $1.3 billion spur is well under way.

The east-west Valley line is not affected by the funding cut, because groundbreaking is still at least eight years off, officials said.

However, it could push back the construction of subway extensions into East Los Angeles, the Mid-Cities area and other projects, transit officials said.

MTA officials said they now are facing a $53 million shortfall in the next fiscal year and a $35 million gap the following year.

In a prepared statement, Riordan said the vote was a ``stinging blow to the region's transportation system.''

Los Angeles County Supervisor and MTA board member Zev Yaroslavsky said the agency brought its political problems on itself.

In the past two years, Metro Rail work has triggered a sinkhole on Hollywood Boulevard, a subsiding Ventura Freeway, two corruption probes, political bickering and a stream of negative stories, including a ``60 Minutes'' segment titled ``The Subway From Hell.''

Two subway critics - Supervisor/MTA board member Michael D. Antonovich and state Sen. Tom Hayden, D-Los Angeles - took the unusual step last fall of writing to Congress, urging them to freeze all Metro Rail money.

``There's no question we were being hurt by elected officials,'' Yaroslavsky said. ``Now that there are other projects in a position to benefit from funding, we became vulnerable because of our construction problems, which are legendary, and the perception it created the Southern California region isn't united. It created confusion.''

In budget negotiations, the Senate had offered $55 million for Los Angeles, the House $90 million. The committee resolved those differences with the compromise. Last year, the White House requested $158 million for Metro Rail but got $85 million.

In the late 1980s, Los Angeles routinely got more than it requested for subway work.

Hayden, who is considering running for mayor and is opposed to subway tunneling under Runyon Canyon, said Congress has sent a message that the MTA needs wholesale reforms. The federal government, he and others note, supplies half of all subway money.

``It's obvious to everyone, except the MTA, they are the laughingstock of the country, maybe the world,'' Hayden said. ``They have refused consistently to act on criticism and have promoted a delusional belief they deserve a bailout and will always get it. They (better) set their priorities straight, or they'll be set for them by Washington and Wall Street.''

Antonovich said the ``MTA board was in denial and doesn't realize the $300-million-a-mile subway won't be funded by Uncle Sam.'' Repeating a longtime theme, he said the vote showed the agency should abandon tunneling and build cheaper light-rail lines.

Wednesday's action could even make that harder.

The Pasadena-Los Angeles light-rail line, whose $1 billion budget has been a constant source of controversy, could lose key discretionary funding that now must flow to complete the North Hollywood subway under a contractual agreement, Yaroslavsky said.

That, in turn, could push back the Blue Line's opening date to the turn of the century and shelf plans to improve the MTA's bus system, one of the nation's busiest and most overcrowded, officials said.

Another hurdle for Los Angeles, both critics and supporters agree, is the growing competition for declining federal transit dollars by other U.S. cities.

Portland and Secaucus, N.J., for instance, did particularly well compared to Los Angeles this year. Some said the politics of committee assignments also came into play, with Sen. Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., now chairman of the Senate's influential appropriations committee, working on behalf of the project in his state.

Rep. Howard Berman, D-Mission Hills, said ``a cumulative series of things'' led to MTA's defeat, including the GOP's reluctance to help Los Angeles and other large urban areas that President Clinton has tried to assist.