Trash Truck Firm Violated No Rules, Task Force Finds

Three top city administrators found no evidence of impropriety by Los Angeles city officials or the manufacturer of its fleet of automated trash trucks in connection with contract bidding, reporting of mechanical failures, or maintenance and repair, according to a report released late Wednesday.

The report comes more than eight months after two third-graders were killed when a hydraulic piston burst through a truck, manufactured by Ontario-based Amrep. Corp., triggering lawsuits that are still pending against the city and the company as well as the criminal prosecution of the driver for allegedly failing to properly inspect his vehicle.

The city commissioned the report after a Feb. 25 investigative story in The Times raised serious questions about the city’s relationship with the manufacturer and suggested that Amrep and partner Inland Empire White GMC may have filed misleading documents with the city to land multimillion-dollar contracts dating back to 1993, and that city officials failed to take action against Amrep after workers reported design flaws to their superiors.

The 33-page report acknowledged some deficiencies in operations and called for improved internal communication involving the trucks and their mechanical problems, including monthly reports on breakdowns, various automation systems and a study of competing companies’ trucks.

The city “had a process to record information on repairs to individual refuse trucks in manual files,” states the report signed by City Controller Rick Tuttle, Chief Administrative Officer Keith Comrie and Chief Legislative Analyst Ron Deaton. “The process did not include procedures to easily identify and summarize significant problems or trends.”

In an interview Wednesday, Tuttle said that one of the benefits of The Times story has been that it “raised some general questions about deficiencies in operations. I wish that [improved systems proposed in the report] had been in existence before that tragedy. Would it have identified this problem to prevent it? We can’t be sure, but it might have helped.”

The report repeatedly states that the task force found no evidence to support various “allegations” in the Times story, particularly that Amrep may have received special treatment in its dealings with the city’s former fleet manager Harold Cain, who went to work at Amrep after he retired from the city.

The district attorney’s office also investigated the bidding process, the report states, and on May 26 said it “did not see a violation of any law.”

“We can only go with the available evidence,” said Deputy Controller Tim Lynch, one of several staff members who researched the city report. “We have always retained the option of opening this up if we find new evidence. There isn’t an exoneration of the way the city did business here.”

Although the report found no evidence of favoritism or other improprieties in handling the contract between the city and Amrep, it confirms many facts revealed in The Times article. Among them:

* Amrep’s owners did submit a separate bid under the name Perma--Amrep spelled backward. The task force says this was because the two brothers who owned Amrep had a fight and neither wanted to be shut out of the bidding process.

* Several city employees did repeatedly criticize Amrep’s trucks and the company’s repair record in writing. But the task force found that the employees never called into question the vehicles’ safety, nor suggested that the problems were serious enough to halt delivery. The report also states that the complaints were properly followed up by supervisors, including Cain.

* A city buyer did approve payments of $350,000 and $200,000 on a $105,000 parts contract. The task force found, however, that he did not exceed his authority because the contract had no clearly stated ceiling. The task force also consulted private waste companies who use Amrep and other trucks, and found that what the city paid for parts and repair was reasonable.

* Two city trucks experienced similar problems months before the accident, but no alarms were sounded.