CONSENT DECREE DRIVES DIFFERENT REACTIONS IN L.A.

Byline: Lisa Mascaro Staff Writer

It was a quarter that prompted the consent decree governing the MTA - a proposal to raise the cost of a one-way bus trip by 25 cents while eliminating popular monthly bus passes.

The Bus Riders Union - outraged that poor and minority passengers were being asked to pay more for shoddy service while rail development boomed - sued to block the hike from $1.10 to $1.35 and the loss of $42 monthly passes.

After two years of litigation before U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter - and pressure from top civic leaders in Los Angeles - the MTA agreed to settle the suit and enter the 10-year consent decree.

Since the case was filed, the MTA has spent $4.5 million on outside legal fees.

It's also had to pay the plaintiff's legal expenses - $5.5 million for $350-an-hour lawyers from the NAACP-LDF, plus $117,000 to consultant Tom Rubin, a former executive at the MTA's predecessor agency, who earns $150 hourly while doubling as the consultant to the Bond Oversight Committee of the Los Angeles Unified School District. (The NAACP lawyers are seeking a pay raise to $550 an hour.)

And it's paid $1.2 million to the court-appointed special master, attorney Donald T. Bliss, who earns $350 an hour to oversee the case.

It is Bliss who ordered the MTA to add nearly 500 buses to reduce overcrowding - half the number the BRU sought, but more than three times the 160 the MTA suggested.

MTA has also replaced its diesel buses with 2,000 compressed natural gas buses, some that are roomier vehicles that can hold more people.

Bliss has now turned his attention to service, ordering the MTA to add 134 Rapid buses - again, fewer than the BRU sought, but more than the MTA bargained for.

Former Los Angles Mayor Richard Riordan, who led the MTA board in approving the consent decree, now says it was a mistake.

``Entering into the consent decree was a mistake I will take part of the blame on,'' said Riordan, now California's secretary of education.

``I certainly thought I was going to get something very different than I did,'' he said. ``The board of the MTA has the duty to give the best, most flexible transit ... In my opinion, the consent decree makes this extremely hard to do, or impossible.''

But Robert Garcia, the former lead attorney for the BRU, says the region's transit system would not have advanced as it has without the court- ordered mandates.

``The MTA consent decree is the best thing that happened to the MTA and the transit-riding people of Los Angeles,'' said Garcia, who is now executive director at the Center for Law in the Public Interest in Los Angeles and heads the LAUSD Bond Oversight Committee.

``This is a historic decision ... The basic premise - that people are entitled to equal access to resources - is what the MTA case stands for.''