Subway Critics Praise Probe

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich and state Sen. Tom Hayden took a victory lap Friday, celebrating the success of their campaign to get a congressional investigation of charges that Los Angeles’ $5.8-billion subway construction project is riddled with fraud and mismanagement.

The unlikely pair--a very conservative Republican and a very liberal Democrat--have lobbied Washington lawmakers for years to look into whistle-blowers’ allegations of widespread problems in the Red Line subway project.

Before a bank of television cameras in Antonovich’s office, they beamed broadly as they expressed admiration for the sagacity of a U.S. senator from Delaware who most people in Los Angeles had never heard of, while a glum pack of detractors frowned in a back row.

That senator, Republican William V. Roth, had announced the previous day that he had handed them the biggest prize they sought: a full-scale probe by the historic permanent subcommittee on investigations, a panel made famous in the 1950s by Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s attempt to root out Communists in the State Department, and later by former general counsel Robert Kennedy’s impassioned investigation of organized crime.

Asked why he had asked for such an examination, rather than let the court system or the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s own inspector general root out trouble at the agency, Antonovich answered:

“When you turn on the lights, the cockroaches run away. We want to know who is making payoffs, why are property owners along tunnel alignments going bankrupt with no redress, why are freeway bridges sinking, why are the concrete walls too thin? The day of telling the truth under oath is almost upon us.

“All is going to be revealed, and then we are going to get a rail transportation system that we can afford.”

Added Hayden: “The courts are becoming defunct as a remedy because they are reluctant to intervene. That is why it is important for Sen. Roth to step to the plate.”

On the sidelines, proponents of Metro Rail took a turn of their own on Friday--sending four representatives to the Hayden-Antonovich news conference in an attempt to spin the bad news into a better light.

“Previous audits and reviews have produced suggestions for improvements [in Metro Rail management oversight], and we continue to aggressively implement them,” said Joseph E. Drew, the MTA’s chief executive, in a prepared statement handed out by a spokeswoman.

“Should the U.S. Senate probe lead to other refinements, the public can rest assured we will incorporate them into our program.”

Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Braithwaite Burke--who like Antonovich sits on the MTA board of directors--picked up the same theme.

“Every review of Metro Rail has found improprieties, but not anything different from any project anywhere else,” she said. “I hope this investigation will put it all to bed.”

Burke also accused Antonovich of seeking the inquiry because he was unable to persuade the MTA board to adopt his pet project--a train in the median of the Ventura Freeway in the San Fernando Valley.

“We have some sour grapes here,” she said. “His attitude is that if ‘I can’t have my way, then I’m going to spoil everything.’ ”

Indeed, Metro Rail proponents fear that the 75 other cities around the nation who want federal money for major transit projects will take advantage of dissension among MTA board members to persuade Congress not to fully fund Los Angeles’ subway system.

Already last week, the House transportation appropriations subcommittee slashed the MTA’s request for $158 million next year to $90 million--an amount that still must clear several more hurdles in the House and Senate before buying more concrete and track for the North Hollywood and Eastside extensions of the Red Line.

At City Hall, a high-level source said Metro Rail proponents were discouraged that Antonovich had derailed what they regard as Drew’s sincere attempt to fix the MTA since he was hired in March.

“The MTA has been improving daily over the past three months, and this is going to set it back,” said the source, who works closely with the agency.

“Mike has been writing to Congress three or four times a month, shooting spit wads until something sticks. This time, someone bit. It is partisan and it’s wrong.”

It is difficult, however, to determine exactly what effect the Senate panel’s investigation might have. Contrary to Antonovich’s announcement Thursday, a subcommittee spokesman said a hearing on the matter will not be held as soon as next month.

Gerald Schneiderman, head of a Hollywood organization that has coordinated nearly $2 billion in lawsuits against the MTA for about 1,400 owners of properties they say were damaged in the wake of Metro Rail tunneling, said on Friday he believes the wait will be worthwhile. He said he had sent Senate investigators “a pile of documents”’ over the past month in response to requests.

“The only thing that the MTA understands is a threat to their money,” Schneiderman said. “They don’t sit around at their board meetings talking about how to build a better subway or take care of the people they’ve harmed, but only how to get more funding. A chance that federal dollars will be cut off is the only way we can get their attention.”

The Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations has in the past examined a wide variety of suspected societal ills: Medicare and insurance fraud, the Russian mafia in America, the threat that domestic terrorists might use chemical weapons, illegal Chinese immigration and the U.S. Marshal Service’s troubled stewardship of a casino in Bell.

Timothy J. Conlan, a George Mason University professor of government, said it is difficult to predict how the subcommittee will handle the Metro Rail investigation because it operates “idiosyncratically” at the discretion of the chairman.

Conlan said that the subcommittee’s large staff of investigators and attorneys commonly use the panel’s subpoena power to grill witnesses in public and private. The committee then produces a report that can recommend legislative change, or suggest to the Justice Department that a criminal investigation is in order.

“The committee is looking for broad systemic flaws in the operation of government that can be dealt with by a change in procedures,” Conlan said. “In this case, they might recommend that the Department of Transportation change its rules or methods in granting federal money to transit projects.”

Conlan noted that the committee typically has little direct effect on how other committees spend money. However, he said, appropriations committee members might rethink their funding of a project if the investigations committee has conclusively shown it is under inept or corrupt management.

A congressional hearing will likely attract whistle-blowers and community gadflies who have long opposed the subway project.

Anti-subway activist John Walsh, for one, stalked the halls outside Antonovich’s office on Friday vowing to fly to Washington to take part.

“I will be there, working the Washington media, wearing my Crooked Politicians Build Crooked Tunnels T-shirt,” he said.