Board Pulls In Late With County Plan for Clean Air

Under the threat of fines that could reach $8 million a month, Orange County supervisors endorsed a clean air plan for county government Tuesday, months after regional air quality officials approved plans for neighboring counties.

The Orange County proposal, which includes a controversial provision to charge the county’s 15,000 employees about $40 a month each for parking, is viewed warily by union representatives and was approved reluctantly by the board. But without it, said South Coast Air Quality Management District officials, county government could face fines of as much as $25,000 a day at each of 16 facilities.

The fines are meant to prod area governments and businesses into developing recommendations for sharply reducing automobile traffic in the Los Angeles Basin, which suffers from the nation’s highest levels of air pollution.

The AQMD has already approved about 1,400 air quality management plans, including those of the San Bernardino, Riverside and Los Angeles county governments. That leaves only Orange County, and officials here have bristled at the pressure to adopt a plan that includes paid parking.

In the plan adopted, the county recommends other incentives, including free and preferred parking for car-poolers, creation of a van-pool system, and compensatory time for workers who use alternative means of transportation such as buses. It even proposes a “walking shoe reimbursement” for employees who walk to work.

“We can debate the issue of whether or not we want to be under these mandates,” said Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, who chaired Tuesday’s session. “The fact is that we are under a mandate at this time.”

With board Chairman Don R. Roth absent, the supervisors accepted the proposed parking policy Tuesday, and it will now be forwarded to the AQMD for approval. It will return to the board for another round of consideration once the unions have been consulted, but the board could approve it even if the unions are not satisfied, officials said.

A final plan should be “signed, sealed and delivered by the end of the summer,” said County Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider.

More than 470 private employers, each with more than 200 workers, have already submitted air quality plans and had them approved. The AQMD approved San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties’ plans in March, and Riverside’s was approved at least a month earlier, said Sarah Siwek, director of transportation programs for the AQMD.

Orange County submitted an air quality plan in December, officials said Tuesday, but AQMD considered it unacceptable.

As a result, officials from the county and the district met several times in recent months, with AQMD representatives leaning hard on the county government to toughen its air quality plan. Unless the county amended its proposal to include such things as paid parking and other conservation incentives, it would almost certainly be rejected, district officials warned in those sessions.

Siwek said the delay was not the fault of laggard Orange County officials. “They’ve been very forthcoming,” she said. “They just have a lot of people in cars that they need to deal with, and that’s made it very difficult.”

On Tuesday, AQMD officials reserved final judgment on the county’s new plan, saying they wanted to see a final copy first. But Tom Eichhorn, media liaison officer for district, added that “it ought to be stronger, even with the parking policy.”

Under the proposal presented to the board by Schneider, county employees would lose their free parking as part of the government’s plan to encourage car-pooling and increase the average number of passengers driving to county facilities from 1.0 to 1.5. Although a final parking fee has not been determined, a report forwarded to the supervisors estimates monthly costs at about $40 per month--or $280 per year--in the civic center area of Santa Ana.

Free parking for government employees “is not consistent” with increasing car-pooling, according to the report.

Representatives of associations representing county employes expressed reservations.

“We are very concerned, of course, about any proposal the county makes that would adversely affect our members,” said Nick Berardino, administrator of employee relations for the Orange County Employees’ Assn., which represents about 9,000 employees. “We’ll be sitting down with the county at the bargaining table during the next several weeks to get a better sense of what this would mean.”

Bob MacLeod, general manager of the Orange County Deputy Sheriffs’ Assn., said that the 1,200-member union is also approaching the coming talks with concern.

“The rumor mill has been going crazy for month now,” he said. “Employees are hearing that they will have to pay anywhere from $25 to $75 a month for parking that they now get free.”