Newsday from New York, New York • 30

aiisin-ii 21 "and City Politics Yi), everything go he doesn't get haunted by jit later. 9n- In the past two years, the city has up inspection of its bridges, in-'creaaing the number of inspectors from to 40, and that too has contributed to the rising number flags. Its like catching fish, admits Ross Sandler, the former transportation who closed the Williams- 9 0 0 a A TOWERING LOAD: The Manhattan Bridge carries the most traffic of all the East River bridge crossings. Here, the eastbound roadway. nurses.

Budget officials say that bridges, and especially the East River bridges, remain a top priority of the Dinkins administration. They point out that spending for bridges is not being cut in the next two years it is just not increasing as rapidly as anticipated. Bridges, they note, are among the few city programs that are not taking deep cuts. Even the Transportation Department, the host agency for bridges, has beat forced to take an overall cut in spending: But they say the Bureau of Bridges has never been willing or able to document how mMntmnw and flag repairs mesh with the reconstruction program. Some maintenance, they say, may be a waste of money on abridge that is about to be rebuilt, and rebuilding will automatically resolve many flags.

We wanted them to factor these things in, says John Murray, assistant city budget director for infrastructure. The data was very poor." The city will spend $3 billion over the next 10 years to reconstruct city bridges, about $200 million short of what the Bureau of Bridges had requested. The Transportation Department averted a shortfall in capital spending for the next two years by transferring $60 million from road reconstruction to bridges. But in his zeal to improve bridges, Steinberger outdid even his own boas and mentor, commissioner Lucius J. Riccio.

Riccio appointed Steinberger to the bridge job in March, and for several months, they worked on a shared agenda. Riccio recalls that he supported his protege on many issues, including new office space, raises for bridge engineers md the quest for more money from City Hall. Steinberger, by all accounts, improved morale in the bureau and increased productivity. The rate of flag repairs, according to Steinbergers own ostimstas, doubled compared with the year before. But as the city sank deeper into fiscal crisis, Steinbergers enthusiasm got a less than warm response from budget officials.

Last spring, the Transports- tion Department granted promotions and raises of as much as 60 percent to a number of staffers, many of them in the bridge bureau, without authorization from City Hall. The citys budget director, Philip Michael, said at the tima that Riccios agency was playing fast and loose with the rules. Michael subsequently put the Transportation Department on pre-audit, meaning that it had to dear every personnel action with the mayor and the budget directin'. Steinberger successfully lobbied for new, bigger offices for his staff, then paid for office ftirniture with $1 milium in emergency bridge repair funds, officials say. Budget officials acknowledge that the furniture was not lavish and that the expense probably would have been approved.

But they complained that Steinberger circumvented normal channels to pay for it, apparently to get theprqject done quickly. The final blow for Steinberger came when subway trains were returned to the western roadway of the Manhattan Bridge in September, after more than a year of suspended service. In an Aug. 17 memo, Steinberger warned Riccio that returning the trains to the western roadway would seriously weaken the bridge. Riccio overruled him.

But on Dec. 27, service was abruptly halted again after inspectors found that a stringer, a steel beam supporting the tracks, had slipped seven inches out of place and was within an inch of failing. If pi? strinjjfrer Tjhd have derailment. The bekm slipped. (burg Bridge.

It depends on how many -fish there are and how much effort you 'put into catching them." City budget officials complain that bridge inspectors are always more diligent during budget season and at times of fiscal crisis as a way of making case for more money. Bridge offi-'j'cials say only they can figure out how to spend. There is a strong body of wisdom that preventive maintenance, which 'lias been at best sporadic for the past 9lhalf century, is the key to preserving citys bridges. To cheat cm mainte-' nance now, engineers say, cuts the life 'of any bridge dramatically, and the im- mediate savings are squandered many ''times over in the cost of future repairs And rehabilitation. The climate surrounding the citys fridges has changed radically and irre-c Vocably since the dosing of the Wil- liamsburg Bridge, and it is that crisis mentality, more than anything else, that has set the terms of the debate over the condition of the Manhattan Bridge.

The need to develop a constituency for bridges and to make them the citys highest priority has become an article of faith for many of those who run the citys bridges, a crusade of cultlike fervor. lake Robert Moses, New Yorks legendary city planner, the bridge barons have discovered that getting attention is half the battle. Sandler tells how the Koch administration realized that it had to become religious about preventive maintenance. 1 And David Steinberger, deputy commissioner of the city Transporatkm Departments Bureau of Bridges until he was Hiniiml last month in an angry dispute with his boss, sometimes cited portions of The Fewer Broker, a biography of Robert Moses, as a model for the way lie should conduct himself, former colleagues recall. Until the day he was dismissed, Steinberger waged an aggressive campaign with City Hall fin: faster expansion of the citys preventive maintenance program.

He also called for doubling the budget for flag repairs from $15 million to $30 million a year. In a memo to the city budget office Jan. 8, two days before he was fired, Steinberger accused the Dinkins administration of reverting to the same myopic policies that caused the crisis. He argued that every $1 million spent nnully on preventive maintenance would save $4 million in reconstruction and repair costs. Budget officials, for their part, complain that the city has immediate needs like retaining teachers that it must balance against hypothetical nnwi like the possibility that the Manhattan Bridge could collapse.

Designing a budget around the fear that a bridge will collapse is about as prudent, they say, as spending your money worrying about the possibility of global warming, -while cutting your milk program for babies. When times are as bad as they are, there are an amazing number of competing needs, says Michael Jacobsen, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. Its tough to ssy 'Whher bridgte rhairttenahce tfi mOre important than'layihgoff teachers dr appreciates this difficulty. Let me repeat to you that everyone appreciates the difficulty. Eventually, by all accounts, Steinbergers tactics became a political liability, for Him and for his boss.

In an interview, Riccio, who considers himself the citys top lobbiest for funding for bridge repairs, compared Steinbergers campaign for more money for bridges to yelling fire in a crowded theater. Frankly and honestly, the people who are going to make those derisions already know the extent of the problem, Riccio says. I am trying to find the optimal strategy of being vocal, and yet also be a smart team player. Steinberger did not return telephone requests for comment. Riccio resigned to see a decline in the dramatic expansion of bridge repair funds.

He advocates a dedicated tax, such as a gasoline tax, to provide a steady source of funding in the future. But for those who love the citys bridges, there is no such thing as too much. In an ideal world, at least for engineers, the city would be building magnificent new bridges, not patching up old ones. Yanev notes wistfully that many of the citys bridges are what he calls champions, the biggest and best of their time. The Brooklyn Bridge was the longest suspension bridge of its time.

The Manhattan was the first suspension bridge of the 20th century. He says he once got a letter from a German engineer complaining that New Yorks engineers are no longer innovators, but rather a bunch of old witches brewing dubious concoctions, trying to save our bridges. I personally would prefer to be cm his team building a new bridge, Yanev says, referring to the German. But there was a time when we could builcL Now this is a time" when have- to revive them. because of measure from misaligned expansion joints that had recently been installed on the subway track, not deterioration, engineers say.

The problem has since been fixed, but subway service has not been restored. Although some transportation officials complained that the slipping stringer was a freak accident, the emergency halt in subway service became a symbol of problems on the bridge and a rallying point for criticism of the citys bridge program. On Jan. 8, details of the Aug. 17 memo were cited in The New York Times.

Two days later, Riccio fired Steinberger. Last month, the dispute escalated as the City Council began an investigation into bridges, and demanded thousands of pages of city documents. When Mayor David N. Dinkins balked at releasing some documents, the council threatened to subpoena them. Dinkins ultimately relented.

Beginning with the subway debate, relations between Steinberger and Rie-do grew increasingly strained, according to transportation documents and interviews with transportation officials. In a Dec. 20 memo addressed to files, Riccio complained that Steinberger had rushed to the scene of a road cave-in on a bridge in the Bronx, without first informing Riccio. David was acting irrationally, Riccio wrote. He said his felt the department should have a presence on the scene and that there was a cover-up about bridges in this department.

The memo concluded by accusing Steinberger of lack of judgment and insubordination. After subway service was suspended in December, Steinberger wrote a memo to Riccio saying that a train derailment could have led to injuries and deaths. He attached a copy of his Aug. 17 memo. In response, Riccio wrote: IfYou imply in this memo and in ether memos that you are the only one who.