Builders’ Lawyer Assails AQMD Policies : Environment: He says the agency’s rules are costing the Southland $13 billion a year. An district board member says, however, that tougher rules are inevitable.

Comparing Southern California’s air-quality district to “central planners in Eastern Europe,” an attorney for the Building Industry Assn. of Orange County upbraided the powerful regulatory agency Friday as an unaccountable bureaucracy championing laws that are costing the region nearly $13 billion a year.

Hugh Hewitt, attorney for BIA’s Orange County chapter, also said that South Coast Air Quality Management District policies are prompting businesses to flee the Southland, cutting thousands of jobs at a time of continued economic uncertainty.

Hewitt’s comments came during a panel discussion held Friday as part of a half-day conference on Orange County’s environment. The gathering was hosted by Orange County and the League of California Cities’ Orange County division.

The discussion also featured Sabrina Schiller, an AQMD board member who took exception to Hewitt’s statements, saying the attorney was taking advantage of the situation.

“It’s so easy to sit up here and punch holes in the AQMD,” Schiller said, adding that Hewitt and others need to understand that regulations intended to clamp down on sources of pollution in Southern California are an inevitability.

“Those rules are coming--whether we like it or not--from us or the EPA,” Schiller said, referring to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which promulgates air-quality rules across the country. “Better they come from the local level,” she added.

Hewitt responded: “Turn it over to the EPA, please ,” explaining that he believes the federal agency is far more accountable to citizens than the Southland’s air quality managers, who are appointed by the governor, state Legislature, counties and cities.

The attorney’s retort drew laughter from the audience of about 150 local government officials and others, who generally responded sympathetically to Hewitt’s remarks during the 45-minute debate.

Hewitt opened his remarks by suggesting that there needed to be “a rethinking of the AQMD structure, since it’s so out of whack.”

While the recession-riddled economy of California is “fractured and sitting at the precipice,” the AQMD has failed to respond and adjust its policies toward curbing air pollution, Hewitt contended.

Those policies, which include tough restrictions on industrial and automobile emissions and tight rules requiring businesses to promote ride-sharing among employees, have instead prompted an exodus of businesses in recent years, he said.

In June and July, 9,600 jobs “fled” the Southland, Hewitt told the audience, adding that the AQMD is “taking us into a tailspin.”

The principal problem, Hewitt said, is that the AQMD is “unaccountable” to the public it serves and practices “an Orwellian” type of “central planning” more common to the former Communist states of Eastern Europe.

“Resist this nonsense,” Hewitt urged the audience. “They’re telling you they can force you to do this. Make them force you to do this.”