Bradley Veto of Traffic Congestion Plan Upheld

By a wide margin, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday upheld Mayor Tom Bradley’s veto of a “hastily conceived, ill-defined” $17.8-million proposal to cut peak-hour traffic congestion.

Needing 10 votes to override, supporters of the proposal mustered only six, while nine council members supported Bradley’s veto. Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, the key supporter of the measure, had conceded defeat last week, noting that only nine members had supported the peak-hour concept in debate over the city’s $2.9-billion spending program.

Yaroslavsky, however, did not abandon the potentially important mayoral campaign issue. Even before the council override vote, he introduced another traffic congestion proposal that is similar to the one that Bradley vetoed.

Calls for Report

Yaroslavsky asked city officials to report on “various strategies to reduce peak-hour traffic and improve air quality.” He said the study should consider use of a bus-fare reduction program, as well as various ride-sharing efforts. Cutting bus fares during peak hours was also an option contained in the defeated measure.

Whatever plan returns to the council in 90 days will undoubtedly compete with a Bradley plan requiring large private employers now subsidizing employee parking to offer all workers $15 monthly to be applied to bus fares. Yaroslavsky has criticized the mayor’s plan as inadequate.

In another budget defeat Tuesday for Bradley’s prospective challenger, the council narrowly upheld the mayor’s veto of $3.3 million in police overtime funds that Yaroslavsky had pushed. The mayor had approved $17.7 million in overtime funds for police and said he would consider additional funding as it is needed during the fiscal year beginning July 1.

Recycling Program

While Bradley’s rejection of the traffic and police issues was sustained, Yaroslavsky helped defeat, by a safe margin, the mayor’s veto of a $625,000 appropriation to expand a pilot recycling program to 90,000 homes citywide. On a 12-2 vote, the council spurned Bradley’s view that the recycling program--employing separate containers for glass, metal and newspapers--should proceed at a slower pace.

The mayor had vetoed $1 million of a $2.1-million appropriation for the expanded program. That would have provided enough money to allow 3,900 households to participate in each of the 15 council districts. By overriding Bradley’s veto, the council provided enough funds for a 5,700-household-per-district plan.