MTA Chief Ousts Head of Subway Construction : Metro Rail: Action is aimed at regaining $1.6 billion in frozen U.S. funds. Search for successor is planned.

In a move aimed at regaining federal funding for the Los Angeles subway, the chief of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Tuesday ousted a top agency executive responsible for managing the troubled construction project.

The removal of construction President Edward McSpedon was ordered by Franklin E. White, the MTA’s chief executive officer. White’s action came six days after the Clinton Administration announced suspension of $1.6 billion of future funding for subway expansion. The funding will be unfrozen, federal officials said, when the MTA demonstrates that it can competently manage subway construction.

“I believe a change of leadership and a different management approach is what is needed at this time in our Metro Rail construction program,” said White, adding that an interim replacement will be named as early as today. A nationwide search will be conducted for a permanent successor.

A majority of MTA board members appeared ready Tuesday to support one of White’s central proposals, to dissolve the subsidiary that oversees construction, called the Rail Construction Corp. White first sought the dissolution last May and again last month. But the board--again at the request of Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan--postponed acting on the matter until at least the end of the month. Riordan is vacationing in Europe.

“I would have liked to have it considered today,” county Supervisor and MTA Chairman Ed Edelman told reporters, adding: “The mayor asked . . . for the opportunity to be here when it is discussed.”

Rae James, Riordan’s transportation aide, said the mayor was briefed Tuesday by phone regarding developments at the MTA and backed White’s prerogative to remove McSpedon. The mayor has not taken a position on dissolving the RCC.

White did not criticize any specific decision by McSpedon, saying only that the MTA’s management of rail construction needs new direction.

“I want to make it clear that Ed McSpedon has done outstanding work,” White said at a news conference. He said he notified McSpedon of his decision late Monday.

Reached at home, McSpedon said Tuesday night, “Working on this great project has been a labor of love for me. I sincerely hope that the MTA’s action will benefit the delivery of transportation services to the citizens of our county.”

Within the last 14 months, controversy has built over the quality of the construction of the subway, the most expensive per mile in U.S. history.

The existence of concrete that was thinner than originally required in tunnels Downtown was reported in August, 1993, by The Times and repairs have been under way for the last seven months. A chief subway inspector also told specialists hired to examine the matter that necessary patches were not made to a damaged plastic liner designed to keep explosive and toxic gases out of the tunnels.

The structures now open to passenger service mostly were completed before McSpedon took control in mid-1990. But more recently, decisions by McSpedon’s staff and MTA consultants regarding tunneling and incidents of ground sinking up to nine inches along Hollywood Boulevard have come under fire.

Excavation there has been halted since Aug. 18 and workers were evacuated two days later when the contractor feared that one of the twin tunnels could collapse.

White reiterated Tuesday that he would await agreements from both the city of Los Angeles and federal transit officials before authorizing a resumption of the tunneling. The MTA will submit its plan for how to resume the construction to city and federal officials by Monday, White said.

“I absolutely expect the Federal Transit Administration and the engineers employed by the City Council to reach agreement with us on that,” White said. He did not speculate on when federal officials might agree to lift the suspension of funding for extending the subway to the San Fernando Valley, East Los Angeles and elsewhere.

In announcing McSpedon’s removal and other changes, White said he is seeking tighter control over construction quality and the supervision of the multibillion-dollar work. The federal government has contributed about half of the funding, by far the greatest share, for the Los Angeles subway project.

Federal authorities, including the FBI and the inspector general of the federal Department of Transportation, have been investigating aspects of the earlier subway construction.

White said that it has yet to be resolved whether McSpedon, who had overseen building of the Downtown subway and other Metro Rail lines since 1990, would remain at the MTA in a different capacity. He had defended his performance in recent days and said that he wanted to retain his position.

White announced other steps in response to the construction problems:

* The inspection-management firm of Parsons-Dillingham would be “phased out” of its role in supervising extension of the subway to Universal City and North Hollywood, White said, if he wins approval of the MTA board.

Parsons-Dillingham, whose inspections and overall management of the first 4.4 miles of the subway were found below “acceptable industry practice” by an independent report prepared for the MTA in March, has a contract to oversee some of the future work. Representatives of the firm, who last week accused the builder of the Hollywood subway tunnels of deliberately concealing defective work from inspectors, defended their performance.

“Parsons-Dillingham . . . has performed its construction management function in a competent and professional manner,” said spokesman Ron Wildermuth, adding that the firm believes that an unreleased study will show that the firm’s more recent work “meets or exceeds industry standards.”

* The MTA will request that the tunnel contractor, the joint venture of Shea-Kiewit-Kenny, “restructure its management team” to complete the ongoing work along Hollywood Boulevard and Vermont Avenue. A Shea-Kiewit-Kenny spokeswoman said Tuesday that the firm would have no comment.

* The MTA will seek reimbursement from design, construction and management consultants for “all costs associated” with the sinking along Hollywood Boulevard. The cost of repairing the tunnels, themselves damaged by the sinking, has not been determined.

* The MTA will decide whether to terminate any of the firms working on the Hollywood tunnels, based on how much it would cost to replace them and the extent to which the companies are found responsible for causing the sinkages.

White said a decision regarding any termination will follow a more detailed assessment of why Shea-Kiewit-Kenny was allowed to use wood wedges, instead of metal struts, for bracing and whether the materials used were installed properly. The substitution of the wedges was approved by engineers of Parsons-Dillingham and the MTA’s design consultants, led by the firm of Parsons Brinckerhoff.

White’s ouster of McSpedon drew mixed reaction.

Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre called the removal a “sad commentary.”

“Why should he be the fall guy?” Alatorre said in an interview. “How does that improve our chance of getting back our (federal) money?” Alatorre said that neither dissolving the RCC nor firing people is necessary.

City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, Riordan’s alternate on the MTA board, said that McSpedon’s removal, alone, is not sufficient to change the agency’s course.

“The whole culture that has grown around the RCC, which has created a very cozy relationship between RCC board members, staff and contractors and subcontractors (and) management consultants, has to be broken up,” Yaroslavsky said. “(The MTA) has to be less cozy and more adversarial in the interest of the taxpayers.”

County Supervisor Gloria Molina chided fellow MTA board members for not dissolving the RCC and giving White authority “to increase control over and demand accountability from the (MTA’s) construction managers and general contractors. . . . A needless bureaucratic layer exists.” She said the federal government had withdrawn funding “after countless construction deficiencies.”

Another board member, Nick Patsaouras, urged White to take more sweeping action. “You say we cannot fire Shea-Kiewit-Kenny. Why not? . . . You’re talking about restoring credibility. . . . Yes, maybe it costs us money.”

Of McSpedon’s firing, Patsaouras said, “It’s not enough. He’s only part of the problem.”

Robert E. Kruse, an RCC board member who has worked closely with McSpedon, defended his colleague.

“Ed is one of the finest construction managers in the country,” said Kruse, an equipment-leasing contractor. “Using him as a sacrificial lamb is not the solution to the problems. . . . It serves political purposes, but it doesn’t support the (construction) program.”

McSpedon began working for the now-defunct Los Angeles County Transportation Commission in 1985 as a civil engineer. McSpedon--whose annual salary is $131,833--defended his record last week, saying that no project of the subway’s complexity could be built without problems. He said that he had made his job “virtually an all-consuming passion for 10 years.”

“In the 10 years I’ve been here, we have put more operating rail miles in place than any other city in the U.S.,” he said in an interview, referring to the Downtown subway and the 22-mile Long Beach-Los Angeles Blue Line trolley. “I would hope that I would enjoy the confidence of the policy makers on the basis of what we’ve accomplished and what we have under way and not based on an incident or two or a problem or two, because those kinds of things are unavoidable when trying to do something as big or as important as this.”