Thursday, Aug. 1, 2002 | 11:13 a.m.
The Regional Transportation Commission will not calculate how much the agency's bus management company could owe for performance penalties during a five-week bus strike, an RTC spokeswoman said Wednesday.
"That, in the RTC's opinion, is not the best use of employees' staff time," spokeswoman Ingrid Reisman said.
The company racked up potentially millions of dollars in penalties for late and absent buses during the contentious strike that ended July 1. In the first days of the strike, RTC officials and board members said ATC, the company contracted to run the bus system, would be held to the contract.
But RTC officials changed their stance after the strike, arguing that the company might pull out of Las Vegas altogether if held to the terms of the contract. Instead, RTC Board Chairman and Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury said the company should be fined $450,000 -- the estimated cost of replacing monthly bus passes for regular riders.
The full board of representatives from regional governments still must approve the $450,000 fine, an action the board could take later this month.
Reisman and RTC Assistant General Manager Curtis Myles said that if the $450,000 fine is approved, there is no need to calculate the full potential penalties.
Myles said he understands why people want to know the potential fines for the company, but calculating the fines could take "hundreds of staff-hours."
The process would be akin to doing a full-scale audit of the bus company, he said. Calculating the penalties would not be a simple matter of adding up missed or late buses, but would have to be estimated based on the number of buses in service, the number of routes serviced, the break times used by drivers and other factors, he said.
"Since the strike has been settled the focus has been on getting service back to where it was before," Myles said.
Bus drivers idled during the strike said then that they did not expect the RTC to levy the fines. They wanted the fines calculated as the strike progressed, figuring that the fines could help push the company to settle the fractious labor action.
Myles, however, said the decision to scuttle even calculating the penalties was not made until after the strike ended.
He estimated the potential penalties would be in the millions, but probably less than $10 million.
Woodbury and RTC General Manager Jacob Snow have said they feared the management company, an arm of a multinational company with headquarters in England, would pull out of the Las Vegas area contract if the full penalties were assessed.
Woodbury said he does not have a problem with the agency skipping calculation of the penalties.
"The union, the company, and the RTC and the public think we should all move on," he said. "It's history. There's no appetite by anybody on the RTC (board) apparently to push for stronger sanctions, so I guess there's no need to calculate it."
Valerie Michael, spokeswoman with ATC, said the company will leave the issue up to the agency.
"We're happy with whatever decision the RTC has made or will make," she said, declining further comment.
But Paul Brown, Southern Nevada director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, said it may be in the public interest to know how much the company will benefit from the RTC's decision.
"I think it should have been discussed in public," he said. "Certainly, it deserves some public scrutiny and debate.
"It's all of a pattern in government agencies, whether it's the county or the state. ... They have regulations or a contract that says there's going to be a penalty, then they get those penalties mitigated or negotiated down."
Brown said reducing the penalties might be justified, but it should be done publicly.
Assemblyman Tom Collins, who walked the picket line with striking bus drivers, said he would like to know how much the company could be fined. He said the Clark County District Attorney's office should evaluate whether the fines can be waived.
Collins noted that the RTC is cutting back service countywide because of a budget deficit, estimated before the most recent round of cuts last month at about $3.5 million.
"I would not be pleased to know the RTC was giving a break to ATC and then making citizens suffer the loss of service to make up for a budget shortage," Collins said. "It sounds like some oversight needs to be in place."
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