MTA TO PAY WHITE'S CONTRACT\Fired CEO will get $204,100 package covering year's salary, perks.

Byline: David Bloom Daily News Staff Writer

Fired MTA Chief Executive Officer Franklin White will receive a severance package totaling $204,100, which includes a year's salary of $177,800 as well as housing and transportation allowances, officials said Friday.

White, whose official last day at the agency was Friday though he has been on paid administrative leave since Jan. 1, is entitled to the money under the terms of his contract, officials said.

After his salary, the biggest benefit is an $800-per-month "mortgage differential" payment which is payable for up to a year, said Rae James, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's executive officer for communications.

That benefit was supposed to soften the financial blow of expensive Southern California housing after White left his job as head of New York state's transportation department in Albany in 1992 to take over the MTA. If White sells the house within the next year, the payments will stop.

The contract also gives White $9,500 in deferred compensation, essentially a retirement fund that puts aside money that won't be taxable until he withdraws it from the account, James said.

White also will continue to receive a transportation allowance from the transit agency, totaling $7,200. The total package will cost the agency as much as $204,100, depending on whether White sells his house.

White was fired by the MTA board Dec. 20 because of complaints about his management of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The day he was fired, White said his only advice for his successor was "Get a good contract. I had a good contract and it allowed me to be independent and make tough decisions."

Those tough decisions ultimately cost him his job, White said, because they angered board members and their supporters who wanted pet projects built.

But without the financial security of a substantial severance package, White said, he and any successor would have a more difficult time making tough decisions without worrying about political consequences.

MTA Chairman Larry Zarian of Glendale and county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, both White supporters, agreed with White's assessment.

"(A successor's contract) is not going to be much easier or much different than the contract Frank White had," Zarian said. "You can't ask someone to uproot from their home and job without some kind of security. It's the cost of doing business, period, but more so in a chaotic situation."

While the severance package is large, given the board's handling of White it may have to offer the same kind of package to White's successor, they said.

"I don't like generous packages like this, but frankly, I'd be surprised anybody worth his salt would take a job like this without some kind of guarantees that they won't be capriciously dismissed like Frank White was," Yaroslavsky said. "It's the price of doing business this way, and we shouldn't do business this way."

Yaroslavsky said the board could have avoided paying any severance at all if it had just left White in his job for the rest of his contract, which was to expire March 31, 1997, and not renewed it.

"It's not like Frank White's a greedy son of a gun," Yaroslavsky said. "He would have had no severance package if the board had just left him in his job for the next year and not renewed the contract."

But board alternate Nick Patsaouras, a longtime critic of perk-laden contracts, said the board should not have been so generous in negotiating with White and shouldn't repeat the mistake in his successor's agreement.