Blue Line Project Woes Prompt MTA Staff Shake-Up

The top manager of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Pasadena Blue Line project was replaced and his deputy was fired Friday in the wake of a scathing audit that found skyrocketing design and engineering costs.

Project manager David Sievers was reassigned to another job, deputy project manager Lynn Struthers was terminated and a new interim project manager was appointed in a major shake-up of those in charge of running the $800-million light-rail project.

“The changes made were necessary to improve the management on the Pasadena Blue Line project,” said Charles Stark, MTA’s acting construction chief. “We want to restore the confidence of the public at large and our funding agencies,” he said.

The sweeping personnel changes come as the MTA is struggling to produce a revised “recovery plan” for how to get its ambitious rail construction program back on track while also meeting a federal court order to improve bus service. The first plan was rejected by federal officials.

With a further slowdown or cutback in subway and light-rail projects a certainty, the move is seen as a way to protect the Blue Line project connecting downtown Los Angeles and Pasadena. In the most recent draft plan, the 13.6-mile trolley line was a top priority for completion.

Stark said the shake-up was also designed to restore the confidence of the MTA board and the agency’s credibility.

The new interim manager, Joel Sandberg, MTA’s deputy executive officer for engineering and construction, was reassigned in October 1994 after overseeing the troubled subway tunnel project beneath Hollywood Boulevard. Sievers has been reassigned to MTA’s systemwide engineering group. He could not be reached for comment.

Struthers, who was deputy project manager for engineering on the planned rail line, said he would appeal his firing through the Civil Service system. His last day on the job was Friday.

In a brief interview, Struthers said he felt he had been terminated unjustly, but declined to discuss the matter further because of legal considerations.

The latest changes follow another highly critical audit by the MTA inspector general that found design and engineering costs on the Pasadena project had soared from an original budget of $47 million to a projected $93.6 million.

At an MTA construction committee meeting earlier this month, Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina was incensed about the staff’s failure to satisfactorily answer questions about how the massive cost overruns could have occurred. Molina, the committee’s chairwoman, called the soaring costs a “total disgrace.”

Struthers and project manager Sievers received some kind of unspecified discipline earlier this month after the inspector general’s second audit of the project in as many years found lax or nonexistent cost controls and inadequate documentation of work performed and payments made.

MTA’s acting chief executive, Linda Bohlinger, disclosed the initial disciplinary action at a meeting of Molina’s committee earlier this month.

Bohlinger said Sievers was disciplined for failing to comply with MTA policy requiring board approval of any contract changes above $200,000.

And Struthers was disciplined for “allowing improperly authorized and inadequately defined work” to be performed by the contractor, Engineering Management Consultants.

In a related move, Molina’s committee recommended that the agency seek new bids for engineering work on the rail line.