2 Pasadena Rail Line Officials Disciplined

On the heels of another blistering audit of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s light rail line to Pasadena, the agency has disciplined the project’s top two officials for failing to curb chronic cost overruns that have sent design costs skyrocketing to almost $94 million with construction barely begun.

The MTA inspector general’s examination of the project found lax or nonexistent cost controls, inadequate documentation of work performed and payments made, and spending increases without the required approval of the agency’s board.

The latest audit--the second in little more than a year--found that the price of design and engineering work for the 13.6-mile rail line from Union Station to Pasadena has nearly doubled from a budgeted $47 million to an estimated $93.6 million.

In the first audit released last year in March, the inspector general found that design costs had leaped to $69 million, a 48% increase. The most recent analysis puts the projected cost at 99% over the original budget.

The refusal of any MTA official to take full responsibility for the persistent problems with the project drew an angry reaction from MTA board member and Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina.

This week--at a special meeting of the MTA’s construction committee that she chairs--Molina grilled agency officials. She called the cost overruns on the $800-million project a “total disgrace” and suggested that “criminal neglect” is involved.

When top officials on the Pasadena project repeatedly refused to offer definitive answers to questions about why problems identified more than a year ago have not been corrected, Molina’s fellow MTA board member and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky joined in expressing outrage.

“It is gutless for people to stand up here [and say], ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember. I can’t recall,’ ” Yaroslavsky said. “You’re not going to get away with it,” he warned.

During what became a rough-and-tumble meeting that lasted for more than two hours, the MTA’s acting chief executive, Linda Bohlinger, disclosed that Pasadena Blue Line project manager David Sievers and his deputy, Lynn Struthers, had both received “letters of disciplinary action” last Friday.

Bohlinger said Sievers was disciplined for failing to comply with MTA policy that requires prior approval from the transit agency’s board for any contract changes above $200,000.

She said Struthers, who was on administrative leave, was disciplined for “allowing improperly authorized and inadequately defined work” to be performed by the contractor, Engineering Management Consultants.

The previous project manager, Laurence Weldon, was removed in June 1995 after the problems with overruns on the engineering contact were discovered.

At that time, Yaroslavsky, frustrated at a lack of accountability, demanded to know why the cost overruns had occurred and what was being done to prevent them from continuing. He was assured that action was being taken to prevent such problems.

But in the latest report, auditors for inspector general Arthur Sinai reported that problems with so-called change orders on the engineering contract continue.

In one case, an MTA official tentatively approved a change order in March 1995 for engineering services not to exceed $180,000. By Feb. 1996, auditors found that $2.2 million had been spent against the change order without any board approval. Cost estimates later increased to $4.5 million on that change order.

Auditors also found that the MTA was paying invoices from Engineering Management Consultants without proper documentation of what work was done or how it was authorized.

Such conclusions mirrored those of the auditors’ initial report, which found substantial cost increases “much of which could be attributed to ignoring MTA cost control procedures and failing to enforce key contract provisions on that project.”

Marty Rubin, head of Engineering Management Consultants, a consortium of major engineering firms, was unavailable for comment Thursday.

Frustrated at the inability to get to the bottom of the problems, Molina interrogated MTA officials at length. Her irritation grew when Sievers told the committee members that he had not seen the latest audit until last week and was not in a position to answer their questions. Initially, he asked for a month to respond, but later agreed to return in two weeks.

Sievers told the committee that “a great majority of the cost growth” occurred before he took over as Pasadena project manager in June 1995. And he insisted that the MTA has tried to implement changes recommended by consultant Arthur Andersen and the inspector general to crack down on the cost overruns.

When MTA board member Mel Wilson came to Sievers’ aid and suggested that Molina was beating up on the project manager, she exploded. “I don’t appreciate it,” Molina said to Wilson. “I have not killed him yet.”

Molina said state legislators, the federal government and Los Angeles County taxpayers are going to hold elected officials accountable for the cost overruns.

She demanded absolute assurances from the staff that they would do exactly what the board asked them to do in containing costs. “Should we just let them go on their merry way?” she asked. “So far, they are at 99% over cost and they haven’t built a damn thing.”

Supervisor Mike Antonovich joined in the criticism, questioning why reforms don’t seem to filter down to the agency’s staff. “Somehow there’s a cavalier attitude that we’ll just approve these and all will be well,” he said.

After a protracted tug of war with various MTA officials, Yaroslavsky summed up the committee’s feelings: “What’s got everybody frustrated is what seems to be a concerted effort of: ‘I don’t know nothing. I didn’t see nothing. I didn’t hear nothing.”