MTA subway work comes under new fire.

State Senate holds hearing; CalOSHA levies fine

The California Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued a new citation against fired Metro Rail subway contractor Shea Kiewit Kenny last week, fining the firm $62,000 in connection with the now-infamous Hollywood sinkhole incident

And a CalOS HA engineer told the Senate Transportation Committee that Metropolitan Transportation Authority inspectors on the troubled Red Line project have been told by their superiors not to cooperate with CalOSHA personnel, "not to call us or talk to us." Safety inspectors on the construction project should have more authority, and their orders should be heeded, advised CalOSHA Associate Safety Engineer Joe Doyle.

All told, CalOSHA has fined SKK about $1 million, but most of those citations have been appealed.

Meanwhile, the entire financial future of the MTA was on the line last week as the Senate Transportation Committee came to L.A. for a special hearing on allegations of corruption and mismanagement in the nation's largest public works project - the Metro Rail construction program. In the end, committee Chairman Quentin Kopp, I-South San Francisco, suggested that the state auditor perform an audit of the MTA.

Some senators accused the MTA of knowingly destroying Hollywood businesses in the hope of building a "better tomorrow" for Los Angeles.

Damage predicted

Sen. Tom Hayden, D-Santa Monica, pulled out a copy of an engineering study that was completed before Hollywood Boulevard sank 10 inches in the summer of 1994. The report predicted widescale damage to buildings along the boulevard but advised that it would be more economically feasible to fix the damage later than to take precautions to prevent it. Hayden said the report "seems to have prophesied what happened."

"We view(ed) it (the report) as a warning of what can happen," said MTA Project Manager Charles Stark. "I am not aware of any policy of the MTA, past or present, to permit damage to private property."

But Hayden insisted that the MTA was destroying businesses and putting workers' lives in danger to achieve some long-range mass transit goal.

"In the short ran, there's corruption, fraud, damage, lawsuits ... but in the end, we have a better Los Angeles?" Hayden asked sarcastically.