Jobs Access and Reverse Commute Competitive Grant Program
As part of TEA-21, Congress created the Jobs Access Grant Program to supplement welfare-to-work transportation activities. Authorized for five years beginning with FY1999, and administered by the Federal Transit Administration, the program funds jobs access projects that provide transportation options to welfare recipients and other low- income people trying to get to jobs and job opportunities, as well as work-related support services like child care and job training. Details of Victories Federal Transportation Bill

• Greater mandated participation for mass transit users in local planning processes regarding how transportation dollars are to be spent;
• Disclosure of spending on federal transportation projects at the local level, giving community groups the information they need to challenge neglect of low-income and minority communities.
• New requirements for public involvement in the recertification of the Metropolitan Planning Organizations (the local groups in charge of transportation spending) by the US Dept. of Transportation.
• The creation of a new federal initiative called Access to Jobs, authorizing $150 million/year to increase options of low-income people seeking jobs.
  

  " What these victories mean for low-income communities will depend on how accountable the Dept. of Transportation is in implementing the new law, and how much organizing takes place at the local level. TEN is holding a national meeting in July addressing such issues as developing local programs connecting low-income people to jobs; getting low-income people the jobs that the funding creates, and more. "

" Perry Crouch exercised his right of free speech and paid dearly for it. The veteran South Central L.A. activist spoke out at a public hearing on the Alameda Corridor project and the next thing he knew his life was a train wreck. He lost his job and when he tried to find a new one, prospective employers wanted nothing to do with him.
At first, Crouch's firing seemed like a frightening lesson about criticizing people more powerful than yourself -- especially when they can influence how millions of dollars in public funds are spent. But nearly two years and two lawsuits later, the meek and the powerful seem to have switched places. A jury awarded Crouch more than $650,000 for his ordeal.
It was a long, convoluted, and ultimately costly saga that started at a 1998 state Senate hearing on the $2.4 billion Alameda Corridor project held at South Gate City Hall. At that meeting, Crouch complained about potential conflicts of interest among contractors and a law firm doing business with the corridor …"

Alameda Rail Project Lags on Hiring Goals
Officials say they're falling short recruiting low-income workers for $2.4 billion transportation corridor.
DAN WEIKEL staff writter L.A. Times 2/11/2000 pB3

One of the authority's goals is for 30% of all work hours on the project to be performed by employees recruited from the nine cities along the corridor's route. Some of those cities contain the county's poorest neighborhoods. The project was 81 workers short of the mark at the end of last year. To fulfill another goal, 60 to 70 graduates of the agency's job training program should have been hired by the corridor's contractors as of December 1999, but only 11 were employed at that time.

"Something must be wrong if only 11 graduates are working for the project," Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke said at the authority's board meeting Thursday. "There needs to be some real analysis done" of this effort. The Alameda Corridor is a 20-mile-long toll route for trains that is designed to improve the movement of cargo to and from the county's fast-growing ports. It is scheduled to be finished by the end of 2002.
Work on the new route is expected to create between 8,700 and 9,200 local jobs over the life of the project, or about 1,300 positions a year. As of December, about 600 people were on the job. The corridor's recruitment goals and educational opportunities have been of critical importance to residents and elected officials in such cities as Compton, South Gate and Lynwood, which have had unemployment rates as high as 30%.

Hiring and job training is overseen by the corridor authority, but it is administered and implemented by a team of construction firms headed by Tutor-Saliba Corp. of Sylmar. "We are behind at this point," said Larry Wiggs, community relations manager of the Tutor-Saliba consortium. "But 90% of the work remains to be done and we have another two years to attain our goals." Wiggs and corridor officials attributed the shortfalls to recruiting problems, high dropout rates and the placement of many program graduates in construction jobs unrelated to the corridor.
Although Los Angeles' port has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars for the corridor, statistics show that the hiring of Los Angeles residents fell short of the corridor's goal by 12%. "This is unacceptable," said authority board member and Los Angeles City Councilman Rudy Svorinich. "Why is my city lagging behind when Los Angeles is a major stakeholder in the corridor? We should be reaping the benefits of this project."

Alameda Project Ex-Official Gives Her Side of Story
DAN WEIKEL staff writer L.A.Times 6/23/99 pB1

Schafer, of Dana Point, was removed from the job March 1. The Los Angeles County district attorney's office and the corridor authority have been looking into the transaction to determine what happened. Last week, the Los Angeles city controller's office called for an independent audit committee to oversee corridor authority expenditures and contracts as the project heads into its most important phase. In an interview with The Times, Schafer, a financial consultant, detailed her version of the events that led to her sudden departure from a job she had held almost two years.
She was responsible for managing hundreds of millions of dollars in government funds and bond proceeds earmarked for the main portions of the project. Her salary was $83,762 annually. Major work is scheduled to begin soon on the most expensive element of the Alameda Corridor: a 10-mile concrete-lined trench that will contain two train tracks. Overall, the new rail and truck route will extend 20 miles from the county's ports to transcontinental freight yards near downtown Los Angeles.

Schafer said the mistake occurred during the first two transfers of proceeds from the corridor authority's sale of $1 billion in revenue bonds. About $3 million, she recalled, needed to be sent from a bond trust account to a corridor authority operating account, so contractors could be paid. Two transfer requisitions, which Schafer supplied to The Times, show that the paperwork was prepared Feb. 19. The documents were signed by Schafer and Tim Buresh, director of construction and engineering on the project.
The requisitions, however, bear Schafer's personal Bank of America account number, instead of that of the agency's operating account. Schafer said that before the requisitions were prepared, she had uploaded information from a Palm Pilot, a hand-held computer, into her regular computer at agency headquarters in Carson. Her Palm Pilot was supplied by the agency. The uploaded information, she said, happened to contain her bank account number, appointments and credit card numbers. She said she kept those personal items in her agency-owned Palm Pilot as a matter of convenience. Schafer said that Feb. 23, the day of the transfer, she called up what she thought were agency accounts on her office computer and mistakenly selected her bank account as the destination for the $3 million.
She said she did not recognize her own account number or realize that it could easily be confused with agency accounts because they too were at the Bank of America. "My bank data somehow got uploaded from my Palm Pilot," she said. "That is how it happened." Schafer said she did not consider her personal use of the Palm Pilot a breach of the agency's financial controls. "It was human error," she said. "Just a freak accident." According to Schafer, the transfer requisitions bearing her account number were sent to Buresh, corridor authority Treasurer James P. Preusch, the bond trustee and the agency's investment managers.

Although an agency manual contained the appropriate corridor account number for bank transaction, Schafer said, apparently no one checked the requisitions for accuracy before the transfer was made. "This is an example of how even the best system in the world can break down for a day," she said. "I did everything in accordance with our procedures."
Authority chief executive James C. Hankla's only comment on Schafer's remarks was: "Clearly, the controller has the primary responsibility." He said he could not discuss the situation further because it is a personnel matter. Sources told The Times last week that the Bank of America initiated steps to return the $3 million to the agency. But Schafer said she discovered the transfer during lunch an hour after the funds were moved. Schafer recalled that she was trying to balance her checkbook and called the bank for account information. "It said I had a balance of over $3 million in my account," she said. "I thought, 'Oh, my God. Did I do what I think I did?' "
Schafer said she immediately called the bank, contacted the corridor authority's top managers and arranged to have the money returned to the agency within hours. Although Schafer said she uncovered the problem, sources said again Tuesday that the bank had started to look into the transfer independently of Schafer. Schafer said she fully cooperated with an internal review of the transfer, offering her personal financial records for scrutiny.

Loose and Lax With Big Money
editorial L.A. Times 6/24/99 pB8

Of more concern is this: Why in blazes was the CFO of one of the nation's biggest public works projects conducting such big-money business from a hand-held electronic organizer that also contained links to her private bank account? Under what checks and balances or chain of command was she able to move such sums on her own? Where were the internal backstops, the folks who say, "Excuse me, what did you just do?"
The Alameda Corridor is a high-speed rail transport route that will connect the bustling ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles to inland transcontinental railroad connections. It will be a vital upgrade to port operations and to the Southern California economy. But it's important for a symbolic reason as well. It's a chance to show that the region can tackle a major construction project and not bollix it. Corridor officials said that such transactions now require two authorizations and can be made only between project accounts. That's good, but Los Angeles City Controller Rick Tuttle's call for an audit is still worthwhile. It might point out other flaws before another seven-figure mistake is made.

"Central to the process, ACJC established the Training and Education Corporation (TEC),which will receive just over $1 million over the project's three-year-life. ACJC forged a partnership with the Carpenters Educational Training Institute and WINTER (Women in Non-Traditional Employment Roles) to provide construction training " Jan 1999

from AFL-CIO Working for America Institute

" … In scope, the project has been likened to the Panama Canal.
The project will pass through a number of low-income communities in Los Angeles. Concerned with past projects in the area -- like the Glen Anderson Freeway - did not result in employment gains for local residents, despite promises to that effect, community leaders, with ongoing support from the Center for Community Change, created the Jobs Coalition as part of an effort to exert some leverage on the construction process.


The Coalition went to the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority, the independent agency that is overseeing the project, to ask for two things. One was a commitment to ensure that community residents would perform at least 30 percent of the work hours on the project. To make that possible, the Coalition also wanted the Authority to require the prime contactor on the project to pay for 1,000 paid pre-apprentice training slots so that community residents would have the skills to get jobs once the project got underway and not be excluded for lack of skills.
The Coalition approached the Carpenters Education Training Institute, which already operated a well respected ten-week pre-apprentice program. …"

" In Oct. 1998, Century, part of the Corridor's Tutor-Saliba contracting team, was selected, in partnership with the Alameda Corridor Jobs Coalition and the Carpenters Educational and Training Institute, to administer the jobs training program for Mid-Corridor Design/Build Project, the excavation and construction of over crossings on the 10-mile trench. "

$15k Liberty Hill Seed Fund grant " to monitor implementation of hiring and training agreements won from the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority that will employ local residents in high-skilled trade agreements. "

Playa Vista Emerging Business Pgm association. Pamela Hamby 323.777.0172

endorsement Coalition on Human Needs' Min. Wage Increase initiative

first ¶ " In 1997, residents of Los Angeles area neighborhoods in the path of what will be the largest public/private rail transportation project in the country learned of the impact the project would have on their neighborhoods—in the form of noise, traffic, and other inconveniences. A handful of community-based organizations (CBOs), along with the Center for Community Change and a number of legal advocates, came together that summer to discuss how to best ensure that their needs would be taken into consideration in the planning and construction phases of this project. By September, the Alameda Corridor Jobs Coalition (ACJC) was 40 members strong and had enlisted the aid of the Employment Law Center in San Francisco."

The Alameda Corridor Jobs Coalition Hits a Gold Mine !
organizing Issue #8 April 1998 newsletter of Center for Community Change on jobs, transportation & welfare reform organizing. CCC published "Getting Good Jobs: An Organizer's Guide to Job Training" $5 focusing on the new Workforce Investment Act.
1000 Wisconsin Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20007

first ¶ " A massive, $2 billion, 21-mile construction project is underway in Los Angeles, where the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are connecting their facilities to a nexus of rail yards just south of the downtown area to speed the movement of cargo. The Alameda Corridor Project is promising to create 10,000 new construction jobs over the next five years, and has already received $400 million in federal funds. "
4th ¶ This is the largest local hiring plan of any public works project in the history of the U.S., said Dennis Rockway, senior counsel for the Legal Aid Foundation of Long Beach. "We are thrilled with our victory," said ACJC Chairperson Benetta Johnson.

James Flanigan staff writer, L.A. Times 11/15/95 " It's being called the most important development of the next two decades for Southern California's economy. It promises to create 700,000 jobs and to generate billions of dollars in business development. Yet most people, if they've heard of it at all, are vague on just what the Alameda Corridor is.
It's a 20-mile enlargement of railroad tracks and truck lanes to speed freight from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to the yards of the Southern Pacific, Union Pacific and Santa Fe railroads and from there out to the rest of the United States. The Alameda Corridor is a necessary adjunct to a dramatic increase of trade through the ports in the coming decades - from $116 billion worth of goods this year to $253 billion worth by 2010."

Failing, But Not Fooling, Public Housing Residents Impact of Job Interventions

National Low Income Housing Coalition 1012 Fourteenth Street NW, Suite 610 Washington D.C. 20005 202.662.1530 fax 202.393.1973

10th ¶ " In L.A., the PRRAC research is being used by a broad-based Alameda Corridor Jobs Coalition to target the $2 billion rapid rail project administered by the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority (ACTA). The Corridor extends 21 miles from downtown Long Beach to L.A. ACTA predicts creation of 10,000 construction-related jobs and "an additional 700,000 local jobs" through the year 2020. The expanding Alameda Corridor Jobs Coalition includes representatives from two public housing developments &

WLCAC Watts Labor Community Action Committee
10950 S. Central Av L.A. CA 90059 213.563.5631


Greater Bethany Economic Development Corporation, intake site
8409 South Hoover Street, Los Angeles, CA 90047


ACORN, AGENDA (Action for Grassroots Empowerment and Neighborhood Development Alternatives), LAMAP (L.A. Manufacturing Action Project), and other community-based non-profits.

Original Member Leaves Alameda Corridor Authority
L.A. Times 7/15/2000 pB4

Trip Planner All regional transportation agencies

DOUGLAS R. FAILING, District 7 division chief for project development
manages a staff of approximately 470 engineers, surveyors and technical support staff responsible for delivering $1.5 billion worth of transportation improvements in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. He represented Caltrans on the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority Governing Board.
contact Mr. Dan Guillen, Asst Dir, Alameda Corridor Project
740 East Carnegie Drive San Bernardino, CA 92408-3571
909.386.4518 fax 909.386.4519 dsg516@aol.com

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