A key congressional panel Tuesday cut back federal funding for Los Angeles subway construction to its lowest annual level this decade, allocating $61.5 million--short of the $100 million sought by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
But MTA officials said they should be able to keep the Hollywood-to-San Fernando Valley subway extension on track by dipping into reserve funds.
And, in light of the MTA's nationally reported troubles, local officials expressed relief that the agency got as much as it did, let alone ended up as the nation's third-highest-funded new transit project. The problems included the MTA's repeated failure to draft a "recovery plan" demanded by federal officials.
"Although it falls short of our original request, we have traveled light-years from where we started," said Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, chairman of the MTA board.
But County Supervisor and MTA board member Zev Yaroslavsky said that declining funding from Washington probably will derail plans for subway extensions to the Eastside and Mid-City.
The subway received about 8% of the $800 million allocated this year nationwide for new transit projects--a far cry from three years ago when Los Angeles received about $163 million, one-fourth of the federal funding. The Los Angeles subway finished this year slightly behind projects in Portland and Salt Lake City.
"It's clear that we're not being given the kind of resources from Washington to meet the plans that were drawn up" a decade ago, Yaroslavsky said. "The demand that L.A. taxpayers ought to be making [of the MTA] is 'Show me the money.' "
The House-Senate conference committee recommendation goes to both chambers of Congress and to the president for expected approval. It represented a compromise between the $51 million recommended by the Senate and $76 million proposed by the House.
The conference committee report approved Tuesday recommends that $24 million of the $61.5 million be spent on a subway extension to the Eastside.
Rep. Esteban E. Torres (D-Pico Rivera), a member of the transportation appropriations subcommittee, said through an aide that he and others wanted to ensure that the transit-dependent Eastside was not forgotten.
The committee report also provides that none of the money will be sent to Los Angeles until the MTA completes a plan explaining how it will pay for its promised rail projects and court-ordered bus improvements. Additionally, before the MTA can receive the money, the Federal Transit Administration must certify that "the fiscal management of the project meet or exceed accepted U.S. government standards."
