MTA Challenges New Bus Order in Court Clash

In a high-stakes courtroom showdown, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Tuesday told a court-appointed special master face to face that he lacks the authority to order the agency to buy 532 new buses to relieve overcrowding.

“We don’t think you have the power to order anything,” attorney Patricia L. Glaser pointedly told Special Master Donald T. Bliss.

Glaser, joined by MTA Chief Executive Officer Julian Burke, said Bliss was “tremendously in error” in directing the MTA to purchase the clean-fuel buses. She said complying with the directive would cost the agency $431 million over five years and “wreak havoc on the transportation system of Los Angeles County.”

Burke said the MTA has embarked on a massive program to buy 2,095 new buses over the next five years to replace its fleet and ease overcrowding. “There should be no doubt at all that the MTA has both the will and the desire to comply” with the consent decree it signed in October 1996.

In the agreement, the implementation of which Bliss oversees, the MTA promised to reduce overcrowding and improve the bus service used by more than 90% of its riders.

Civil rights attorney Constance Rice told Bliss that the MTA’s motion asking him to clarify or modify his order amounts to an arrogant attack on the consent decree and the special master chosen to oversee compliance. “It is a motion to defy this court,” she said.

Rice recounted how the nation’s second-largest bus system was allowed to deteriorate while the MTA and one of its predecessor agencies concentrated on building a subway and light rail lines. “It is not the bus riders’ fault that we are now in the position of an emergency. It is solely MTA’s fault.”

Her voice tinged with frustration, Rice said MTA has “mended but not ended the bus deterioration strategy.”

Both Rice and Richard Larson, attorneys for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said the MTA accepted the special master’s authority when it agreed to the consent decree to avoid a trial in a federal civil rights lawsuit that accused the agency of discriminating against predominantly poor and minority bus riders.

For more than three hours, Bliss heard arguments from both sides on the central question of whether he has the power to make the MTA buy the natural gas powered buses.

Glaser led off, immediately confronting Bliss, a Washington, D.C. attorney, who sat directly in front of her with his hands folded, listening intently.

The MTA’s newly hired outside attorney launched into the agency’s most vigorous courtroom objections to date, saying flatly that Bliss acted outside the scope of his power. Bliss said the MTA’s position “is inconsistent with the position it has taken in the past.” He noted that the agency has participated in proceedings before him and defined his authority in a previous legal brief. “Has MTA changed its position now?” he asked.

“We have rethought our position,” Glaser replied.

Moving to other issues, she said Bliss had apparently ignored the fact that the consent decree sets “targets” for reducing overcrowding by certain dates, not absolute numbers.

Glaser said that 97% to 98% of the time, the MTA is in “very substantial compliance” with the Dec. 31, 1997, target of no more than an average of 15 passengers standing on its buses. “It’s a record we are improving upon,” she said.

The MTA also contended that Bliss cannot direct the transit agency’s priorities. “The MTA must be allowed to run the MTA,” Glaser said.

While not disputing that the bus system was allowed to decline, she asserted: “We’re cleaning up our history.”

MTA chief Burke said the agency’s plan to buy 2,095 new buses, convert its troubled fleet of 333 ethanol buses to diesel and add sophisticated tracking and communications equipment will help assure that the agency meets progressively stricter targets on overcrowding. The agency also argued that it can make better use of its bus fleet by changing schedules.

But he said that to force the MTA to spend $431 million more on top of the $1 billion being committed to bus programs over five years could take money--particularly operating funds--away from other critical transportation programs.

“We have substantially hit the wall to further expand our bus operations,” Burke said, noting the MTA has other obligations besides running buses.

To operate the additional buses, NAACP attorney Larson said the MTA will “have to be as creative in finding money for buses as they have for rail.”

He accused the agency of “playing fast and loose with the courts” by arguing that Bliss has no power to issue orders, but having gone to the special master last year seeking a restraining order to stop the Bus Riders Union’s “No Seat, No Fare” campaign.

Perhaps foreshadowing the next chapter in the long-running legal drama, Tuesday’s clash took place in the wood and marble courtroom of U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter, who presided over the MTA case, approved the consent decree and affirmed the choice of Bliss by both sides.

Bliss promised a ruling on the MTA’s motion as soon as possible. If the special master refuses to modify his order, the MTA has signaled that it will appeal. And it will be Hatter who will once again be called on to rule.

Only one MTA board member, county Supervisor Gloria Molina, showed up to hear the arguments. “There is no doubt we have been inattentive to the bus system,” Molina said. But she said Bliss cannot order the agency to buy still more buses at the expense of other transportation projects.

“We’ve got to come to some reasonable middle ground,” Molina said. “Or Terry Hatter can take over the system and run it himself.”