AQMD Hikes Its Budget, Raises Fees to Pay for It

The South Coast Air Quality Management District on Friday adopted an $80-million budget for fiscal 1989-90 and increased fees to stationary polluters nearly 20% to help finance it.

Prodded by Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, the lone dissenter in the voice vote, the 12-member board agreed to work toward establishing management audits, an extended five-year budget planning process and new ways to finance the district’s operation.

The district has embarked on a bold plan to bring the Los Angeles Basin into compliance with federal air quality standards by the year 2007. Staff members contend that the budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 was the minimum amount necessary to begin that work.

Financial Efficiency

Although passage of the proposed budget and fee increase proceeded as if by script, the board clearly sympathized with contractors and small businessmen who pleaded for greater financial efficiency, long-range planning to give them warning about future fee increases and an end to excessive fees.

Board members appeared particularly moved by the white-haired, 65-year-old owner of a Whittier parts painting company who said he would have to go out of business if the board did not spread the cost of curbing pollution.

“It is not fair folks, it is not fair,” said Harel Martin, who with his family runs the Santa Fe Enameling Co.

“Pass a little on to automobiles or homeowners. We want to pay our fair share, but not 20%” he urged, winning the day’s only applause in the crowded hearing room.

District Executive Director James M. Lents, trying to mollify contractors, said the district’s work traditionally has focused on stationary sources of pollution. Therefore, he said, raising revenue for inspections and permit processing by assessing fees against the manufacturers and contractors who created the pollution was appropriate.

But now that the district is assuming some responsibility for monitoring mobile sources of pollution, Lents said, new sources of revenue should and will be found.

He said the California Clean Air Act recently empowered the district to collect fees from vehicle owners and that his staff will present suggestions to the board on how to do that by the end of this year.

Lents also noted that a bill is currently pending in the Legislature to assess an additional $3 for each vehicle registration to combat air pollution.

‘Creative Ways’

Robert Rascon, spokesman for the Southern California Air Quality Alliance, a part of the California Manufacturers Assn., asked for “more creative ways to generate revenue” to ease the burden on manufacturers. He suggested taxing homeowners and renters, for example, for using gasoline lawn mowers and leaf blowers.

District staff members said the approved 19.8% fee increase will produce only 7% more revenue next year because emissions, upon which the fees are based, are declining.

Fees usually cover about 85% of the district’s budget needs--88% in the current year and 82% in the budget adopted Friday. The remainder is made up from state, federal and local government sources.

The budget adopted Friday totals $80.2 million, a 12.3% increase over the $71.4 million spent this year and includes 40 new staff positions. Some manufacturers’ representatives, however, said the new budget is actually a 38.5% increase over the $57.9 million proposed by the district for the current fiscal year at this time last year.

Antonovich, backing up his argument with arithmetic, criticized both the fee assessment and the budget increase.

“Placing the burden on the group responsible for the least amount of emissions--mobile sources are responsible for 70% of it--is not fair,” he said. “And it does place an unfair burden on small business owners.”

Comparisons Made

Antonovich said that the district’s budget had increased 185% over the last five years, compared to 37.6% for Los Angeles County, 34.8% for the state of California and 52.7% for the city of Los Angeles over the same period.

“I have never seen budgets increase to the degree that they have in such a short time frame as they have with this agency,” the supervisor said.

Other board members countered that the district must increase expenditures because of duties imposed on it by the federal government to clean up the area’s air.

“We are not a multipurpose government which can cut services,” San Bernardino County Supervisor Robert L. Hammock said. “We are a single-purpose agency on a crusade.”