Spokesman Raps AQMD Effort, Quits

James N. Birakos, deputy executive officer of the South Coast Air Quality Management District and its most visible spokesman, said Wednesday that he is quitting the district after being told that there was no guarantee he would keep his job following a reorganization of the executive staff.

Birakos, 49, who has been with the district since its inception a decade ago, said the decision to leave his $65,000-a-year post at the end of June was his own.

Birakos said that he is leaving because the district has lost its “zeal” to fight smog and is run by an unimaginative executive staff and a governing board that treats air pollution as a “hobby.”

However, both Birakos and AQMD Executive Officer James Lents confirmed that Birakos decided to leave after he was privately informed that he could lose out in competition for the new post of deputy executive officer for public affairs, a position comparable but not identical to Birakos’ duties now.

“I think if there was a dispute at all, he (Birakos) felt he was automatically in line for deputy executive officer for public affairs and I pointed out to him that he wasn’t,” Lents told The Times. “What he sees as his job and what I see as his job is a disputed item.”

“If I had found Lents a more understanding, a more imaginative leader, I might have stayed on,” Birakos said, “but certainly no more than another year.”

Birakos said he will serve as an air pollution adviser to Mayor Tom Bradley and private businesses. He said details have not been worked out.

Birakos charged that the AQMD “has lost its zeal” and “cannot address the problems it faces, and the problems are immense.”

“I think the (AQMD) board deserves its blame for the absence of initiative and imagination in moving ahead in this (air pollution control) area. The board is really a hobby board. They meet once a month. They don’t provide the kind of imagination and leadership that can be provided,” he said.

He described the executive staff as having the mentality of government bureaucrats. “To be in air pollution control and really do the job you’ve got to be a little more emotional and a little more committed than being another bureaucrat in government,” he said.

He added: “I’m including the staff of the district at the very highest level. I’m talking about now and the last 10 years.”

Lents said Birakos is “in error” in his assessment. “I’ve stated before, and the board itself recognizes that more could have been done in the last decade. There are a lot of changes in store for this agency. That’s one of the reasons I was brought in from the outside to help instill some change. It will occur and it has occurred. Jim chooses not to be part of that. That’s his choice to make,” Lents said.

The district has come under repeated criticism this year from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and members of Congress and the state Legislature. A bill to reorganize the district has been introduced in Sacramento.

The South Coast Air Basin--Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties--has the nation’s worst smog problem and will not meet the federal Clean Air Act’s deadline at the end of this year for complying with national standards for ozone and carbon monoxide.

Birakos has been an air pollution official since 1966, having also worked for the predecessor of the AQMD, the Los Angeles Air Pollution Control District.