Industry Changes Adopted as Panel Favors Smog Bill

Heeding lobbyists from oil companies and utilities, the Senate Governmental Organization Committee on Tuesday approved a scaled-down anti-smog bill, but only after stripping it of a key enforcement tool that would have allowed both civil and criminal penalties against air polluters.

The industry-sponsored amendments, adopted over the objections of the bill’s author, Assemblyman Byron D. Sher (D-Palo Alto), satisfied committee members, who approved the measure on a 7-0 vote.

Stricken from the bill was a provision that would have allowed prosecutors to simultaneously seek civil and criminal penalties against violators of emission standards. Sher stressed that, despite deletion of that provision, the measure still contained elements that would cut emissions in urban areas that fail to meet air quality standards.

Strength Debated

“We still have a strong bill here,” Sher said.

But James M. Lents, executive officer of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, was critical of the measure that emerged from the committee. “It’s better than nothing,” he said. “It’s certainly weaker than we would have liked.”

Lents said the absence of authority to pursue both civil and criminal penalties maintains the status quo in enforcement and “complicates our job. It basically leaves us where we have been for the last several years.

“I have to choose a certain path to go down (against a violator) in advance,” Lents said. “It’s bad, it’s not good.”

Sher told committee members he did not want to remove the dual penalty provision, similar to authority already granted to authorities who regulate water pollution and toxic waste. “It’s an enforcement tool,” he said. “I don’t want to voluntarily take those provisions out.”

But committee members made it clear that there would be no bill if the enforcement power remained intact.

“The people who are impacted by these controls and who might be in violation obviously are concerned about prosecutors concurrently going for civil and criminal penalties,” Sher said. “They don’t want it.

“There is a lot in this bill that is going to impact the stationary sources (industrial and commercial polluters) and the mobile sources (vehicles) as well. They know that violations occur and they are worried.”

Evelyn Heidelberg, a lobbyist for the industry-sponsored California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance, said the power to seek civil and criminal penalties was not necessary because air quality districts have new authority to seek fines of up to $25,000 a day for violations. “The districts have powerful enforcement tools in the form of higher penalties,” she said.

In addition to removing the dual enforcement provision, the committee also approved industry-backed amendments that would require air quality management districts to consider the economic effect of smog control measures.

With the amendments, industry opposition to the measure abated and the measure was sent to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

“It says the bill has been weakened,” Lents said. “It says the bill probably isn’t as strong as it ought to be.”

The measure, which has the backing of environmentalists and clean air advocates, was designed to move California toward attainment of air quality standards by requiring an annual 5% reduction in emissions in the state’s smoggy urban areas.

During negotiations with a coalition of nine oil companies, Southern California Edison Co. and industry groups, Sher agreed to accept another amendment that would allow air quality districts to substitute any objective measure of progress in reducing air emissions instead for the strict 5% annual requirement.

Despite the amendments, Sierra Club lobbyist John White praised the measure. “It’s a good bill,” he said. “It isn’t as strong a bill as it was. The deliberations reflect the influence and enormous pressure brought to bear on the committee by those affected by the bill--utilities, oil companies and manufacturers.”