Assembly Panel to Review Hiring of Laidlaw Bus Drivers

A state Assembly committee will look into the hiring practices and supervision at Laidlaw Transit, the largest school transportation contractor in Los Angeles, following the arrests of two Laidlaw employees accused of driving buses while drunk.

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) said the Assembly Transportation Committee, which he chairs, will review Laidlaw practices at a hearing Feb. 15.

“Something’s obviously wrong when a guy can get drunk and get behind the wheel of a school bus,” Katz said. The second Laidlaw arrest in as many months “underscored the need to call Laidlaw in and have them start answering some tough questions,” he said.

Katz also said several state agencies agreed Monday to improve screening of applicants for jobs as bus drivers.

A San Diego-based driver, Joseph Bolden, was arrested Friday after crashing into a pickup truck. Injured in the collision were one of the 12 student passengers and two passengers in the truck. Blood-alcohol test results are not expected until the end of the week.

In January, another Laidlaw driver was arrested in Encino as he prepared to pick up students at Lanai Road Elementary. A breath test showed the driver, Harold Keith Lone, had a blood-alcohol level of 0.27%, more than three times the new legal limit of 0.08%.

Los Angeles-area school districts that use Laidlaw’s services say they are closely watching investigations of the two incidents. Laidlaw provides about one-quarter of the buses used in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Katz said representatives of the Department of Justice, the California Highway Patrol and the Department of Motor Vehicles agreed to speed up state fingerprint checks and stop issuing temporary driver certifications as of June 1. Currently, 618 drivers in the state are working with temporary permits while their backgrounds are checked.

However, some district administrators expressed concern that the state’s actions could lead to a shortage of drivers.

“The concern I would have is we need to be able to transport students,” said Robert Smith, assistant superintendent for Ventura County schools. “What happens if there’s no way to issue temporaries and half a dozen bus drivers quit or get sick.”

Ventura employs Laidlaw to drive about 500 special-education students to schools around the county, Smith said.

Laidlaw spokesman Dave Daley, vice president of operations, said the San Diego accident differed from the Encino incident because Bolden had a relatively clean record--only one prior accident in the bus yard--while Lone had adopted an alias to disguise a long history of drunken driving and criminal activity. Lone was driving with a temporary permit.

After Lone’s arrest, Laidlaw instituted a more thorough background check of its applicants’ driving records. On Monday, Daley said he also plans to train staff members who have contact with drivers, such as dispatchers, field supervisors and trainers, in ways to detect and report suspected drug or alcohol use.

Los Angeles Unified has the ability to test any drivers--their own, Laidlaw’s and those who work for the other five private companies that have district contracts--they suspect of substance abuse. However, Bud Dunevant, district director of transportation, said only a few drivers are tested each year.

A district survey completed in 1988 and updated last year found Laidlaw’s drivers were two to three times as likely to have accidents as were drivers employed directly by the Los Angeles Unified School District. Daley said a major reason for the difference was the district’s practice of hiring away Laidlaw’s top drivers.

Dunevant agreed.

“We hire, basically, their best drivers,” Dunevant said. District salaries range from $15 to $18 an hour, twice as high as Laidlaw’s.

Los Angeles County schools, which also use Laidlaw drivers, have not had any comparable problems with the company, said Transportation Officer Charles Devlin. He said mixing alcohol and the transport of children is “unacceptable, unconscionable.”

“They obviously were very serious incidents,” Devlin said. “The question that has to be answered is: Is it all pervasive within that contractor? You begin to wonder.”