COUNTYWIDE : Un-Congratulations, Board Tells AQMD

Two weeks ago, all five Orange County supervisors signed a resolution commending the South Coast Air Quality Management District on the completion of its new headquarters.

On Tuesday, they took it back.

Voting 3 to 2, the supervisors rejected the same resolution that they had signed--some of them unwittingly--in late November. And because it was presented to the AQMD as part of the district’s Nov. 23 dedication ceremonies, bemused air-quality officials had to track down the framed resolution and pull it off the wall after the supervisors’ vote.

“The Orange County resolution had a proud place beside the Los Angeles one,” said Tom Eichhorn, an AQMD spokesman. “But we’re taking it down now, and we’ll send it back.”

Resolutions of commendation are approved by the supervisors every week, and Tuesday’s was the first in years to draw even an opposing vote, much less to be defeated. The extraordinary move comes as some members of the board are searching for ways to vent their displeasure at the air quality district.

Supervisors Roger R. Stanton, Don R. Roth and Thomas F. Riley voted against the resolution, while Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder and Board Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez supported it.

Several board members appeared caught off guard, however, when Wieder informed them after the vote that they had already signed the resolution and that it had been presented to the AQMD. Her office had circulated the resolution to the other supervisors in late November, but it had never gone before the board for a vote.

Stanton, who led the effort to reject the resolution, said later that he did not know that it had been sent to the AQMD and did not recall having signed it.

“It’s a matter of trust that this office does not send out resolutions for the other supervisors to sign unless they’ve been approved,” he said. “I expected the same level of trust from the other offices.”

Under normal procedures, proposed resolutions are submitted to the five supervisors and appear on the agenda for board action. Only after they have been approved do they become official.

In this case, however, staffers for Wieder said they had received the request just before the board’s two-week Thanksgiving break and therefore had circulated the petition for signatures before the official vote. The practice, although unusual, is not unheard of.

What is almost without precedent is to have one rejected.

Stanton said he opposed the resolution because he and other officials believe that AQMD regulations have cost Orange County and the region roughly 380,000 jobs. Moreover, Stanton said the new AQMD headquarters, a 370,000-square-foot office building in Diamond Bar, reflects the growth of the district bureaucracy.

Roth also has angrily accused the district of thwarting plans for expanding commuter rail, and he refused to back the resolution partly because of what he called the district’s “stubbornness” on that issue. The district has pushed for electric trains rather than diesel-powered ones, but Roth and other county officials complain that they cannot make the change because they do not control the train tracks.

“We’re in this standoff even as people desperately want more commuter rail,” said Roth, who on some recent occasions has taken to referring to air-quality officials as the “airheads on the air board.”

“I’m trying to get their attention,” Roth said during the board meeting. “We can’t just keep telling them how great they are.”

But Wieder said later that her colleagues behaved foolishly, and she chided them for their vote.

“I think they knew not what they did,” Wieder said. “After all, they had already signed the damn thing.”