Agencies Clash Over Commuter Trains and Toll Roads : Transportation: Smog regulators and county officials accuse each other of working at cross-purposes.

In a joint gripe session aimed at clearing the air, Orange County transportation officials clashed Monday with regional smog regulators over the fate of new commuter trains and toll roads.

Both sides kicked up some dust.

Transportation official Dana W. Reed accused the South Coast Air Quality Management District of “an act of aggression” in asking the state not to fund several new rail programs until the environmental benefits of electrifying both commuter and freight service are weighed.

And AQMD Chairman A. Norton Younglove of Riverside charged that Orange County had planned new toll lanes on the Riverside Freeway that “don’t solve anything” because they will end at the Orange County line.

But the luncheon session at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace was mostly cordial because, as Orange County Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder noted, both sides had been guilty of miscommunication in the past and the twin goals of moving people and cleaning the air can collide.

First proposed by Wieder, the session started with Stanley Oftelie, chief executive officer of the Orange County Transportation Authority, stressing that his agency is trying to deliver “voter-approved” transportation projects under Measure M, the half-cent sales tax hike approved by Orange County voters last year to fund $3.2 billion in new highway and transit improvements over 20 years.

Oftelie’s repeated use of the phrase “voter-approved” implied a sharp distinction with the AQMD, which issues smog rules that have never been before voters.

AQMD Executive Director James Lents recalled that the AQMD is required by the state and federal governments to meet clean air standards by 2010. The agency has had to get tough, he said, because past efforts have been viewed as a “failure in getting the job done.” The result, he said, has been that the last three years have been the “cleanest” on record.

Turning aside arguments that tough smog rules are contributing to a mass exodus of businesses and jobs from Southern California, Younglove, the AQMD chairman, said that if left unattended, the smog would be so bad that “the only jobs you would have would be medical-oriented.”

Far worse contributors to the loss of jobs here, Younglove argued, have been the high cost of housing and crime, particularly in Los Angeles. However, he acknowledged that all of the state’s environmental laws, taken collectively, make California “the most difficult state in the nation to do business in.”

“If we don’t improve mobility,” Wieder said, “then business will have another reason to leave.”

When Younglove protested that his agency had done nothing to stop Orange County from moving ahead with commuter rail service, Reed, a board member of the OCTA, accused the smog agency of an “act of aggression” when it asked the state not to spend any money on such rail programs until the electrification issue is settled.

On the issue of toll lanes, the AQMD’s concerns about the Riverside Freeway project were satisfied last month with an agreement that car pools of three or more people would be allowed to use the lanes for free.