The Los Angeles City Council is expected Friday to oppose a state Senate bill that would drastically overhaul the governing board of Metro.
The bill represents Sen. Tony Mendoza’s third attempt in two years to overhaul the board and increase the representation of cities in areas of the county outside of Los Angeles. Mendoza, D-Artesia, contendst the county’s other 87 cities are underrepresented on the board and its projects often benefit Los Angeles at the expense of smaller cities.
The Metro board is made up of 13 voting members and a non-voting representative of the governor who oversee the agency’s vast network of public buses and rail lines.
The board consists of the mayor of Los Angeles, three appointees of the mayor, all five members of the Board of Supervisors and a representative from each of the county’s four sub-regions.
SB 268 would eliminate three members of the Board of Supervisors on the Metro board while adding three more members from the county’s sub-regions. It would also eliminate the Los Angeles mayor’s three appointees in favor of five City Council members.
The current publicly available text of the bill does not include mention of the three additional members from the county’s sub-regions, but a spokesman for Mendoza said it will be added soon.
“SB 268 runs counter to the spirit of local control by changing the membership of the Metro board without local consensus,” Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Bonin wrote in a letter to the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee. “These changes set a dangerous precedent for state control of local transportation boards and agencies.”
Bonin is the chair of the City Council’s Transportation Committee and also one of Los Angeles’ representatives on the board.
“The primary reason for the bill is to ensure that there is fair and equal voting rights for other parts of the district. The communities that currently don’t have as much influence on the board will have more ability to have a larger voting percentage,” said Tim Kirkonnell, communications director for Mendoza.
Mendoza introduced two bills last year that sought to increase representation of the smaller cities, including one that would have replaced three of the county seats with a post for Long Beach and for appointees of the president pro tempore of the Senate and the speaker of the Assembly, and another that would have added 10 new seats. Both were shelved by the Senate.
The new bill comes as Metro and the county are making plans for spending the estimated $120 billion that will be generated by a half-cent sales tax increase stemming from voter approval of Measure M in November.
“SB 268 also comes at a time when Metro is making historic investments to transportation to improve services across Los Angeles County. This bill would disrupt that process and make it more difficult for Metro to make critical investments that will create jobs, reduce traffic, and reduce pollution,” Bonin’s letter said.
“SB 268’s top-down approach is unnecessary and does not accurately reflect our region.”
