Receivership urged for MTA.

Members of the state Senate last week called for possibly placing the Metropolitan Transportation Authority into receivership and removing MTA Chief Executive Franklin White as ways of fixing the beleaguered transit agency that is building the largest public works project in the country.

State Sens. Richard Polanco, D-Los Angeles, and Tom Hayden, D-Santa Monica, sent letters calling for radical change at the MTA to Larry Zarian, chairman of the MTA Board of Directors, and Assemblyman Richard Katz, D-Panorama City, in preparation for a special Assembly Transportation Committee meeting Oct. 31 at Los Angeles City Hall.

Katz, chairman of that committee, called the meeting to ask MTA officials to respond to an earlier request that they come up with ways to restructure their agency. At the meeting, Zarian and White presented some of their ideas and were grilled by legislators, who discussed problems at the MTA but failed to settle on any solutions.

The Legislature is considering a major overhaul of the MTA, which was created in a bill authored by Katz, because allegations of mismanagement and bloated bureaucratic spending, local and federal investigations into bribery and corruption, and the sinking of Hollywood Boulevard, among other things.

Hayden's letter to Katz said it is crucial that the MTA subway construction project "be stopped" before it proceeds to North Hollywood.

"To get there, the MTA plans a 14-month-long, 24-hour-per-day bombing (explosives blasting) campaign below Runyan Canyon and a dewatering project that could dump up to 25 million gallons of water per day into the Los Angeles River and Ballona Creek. The impact on the environment and quality of life in the Hollywood Hills would be adverse to say the least," wrote Hayden. "What we are witnessing is a rogue agency which has utterly failed in its transportation mission, instead spending down the remaining billions in its budget before it is forced to shut down.

"You should seriously consider receivership as one of the organizational alternatives on your agenda. It has been done with bankrupt and scandal-ridden gambling clubs and school districts. Receivership may be needed in the future for the MTA."

Polanco wrote a letter to Zarian saying White should be fired because White has failed "to make public safety, worker safety, accountability and quality top priorities."

He said White failed to respond to repeated warnings about groundwater under Hollywood Boulevard - water that first contributed to the sinkage of the boulevard and 10 months later to the now-famous sinkhole west of Vermont Avenue.

Two months after Hollywood Boulevard sank as much as 10 inches in some places in August 1994, Polanco himself wrote letters to the MTA, its design consortium Engineering Management Consultants and the U.S. Secretary of Transportation expressing concerns about groundwater.

"Despite my warnings, it appears that for the following eight months, no one at the MTA involved in the tunnel remining work bothered to check if the groundwater level was rising above the tunnel crown. Yet it was obvious," wrote Polanco to Zarian. "If my staff could see this, why couldn't the contractor, the construction manager, the EMC or the MTA? Are these folks working with their eyes closed?"

Water table rises

Recently released reports show that MTA contractors "dewatered" in the sink-hole area in the summer of 1993, lowering the water table below the subway tunnel crown, and submitted and approved plans for realignment in mid-1994. But they did the realignment work in June 1995, after heavy winter rains had raised the groundwater table 20 feet.

"Common sense would have led the MTA, the EMC, the construction manager (Parsons-Dillingham) and the contractor (Shea Kiewit Kenny) to regularly monitor the water levels in the observation wells before remining," wrote Polanco.

He also criticized White for failing to implement his own "recovery plan" following the August 1994 sinkage on Hollywood Boulevard, a plan that called for the MTA to bring construction management functions "in-house." Because the plan was not implemented, the MTA "abdicated all quality and safety responsibilities to a host of consultants and contractors," wrote Polanco.

"Mr. White should have learned a lot from the first subsidence in August 1994," wrote Polanco. "Mr. White's failure to take strong action set the stage for the sinkhole."

Polanco also accused White of failing to fire engineers who are not licensed in California.

Licensing stance defended

Although he declined to respond to Polanco's letter blaming him for the sink-hole incident, White did comment at the Assembly Transportation Committee hearing about the licensing issue, saying that all the unlicensed contractors discovered in 1994 were asked to get California licenses and were reassigned to work that doesn't require a license.

Katz, at the hearing, expressed uncertainty about what new structure would fix problems at the MTA, but he maintained that something must be done because the MTA "is screwing it up for everyone else."

Because people think the MTA is wasting their tax money, they assume all government can't be trusted and refuse to approve bond issues and tax increases, Katz said.

Katz further stated that the MTA only fixes problems, such as unlicensed contractors, when someone else points them out, rather than actively looking for ways to improve.

All the legislators agreed something needs to be done to "depoliticize" the MTA board, including banning board members and their staff members from sitting in on procurement interviews.