The Complex Politics of Smog

Those two famous rivals--Gov. Pete Wilson and Assembly Speaker Willie Brown--are hatching schemes that could prove dangerous for the Southland’s powerful air pollution control agency.

The agency is the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which regulates everything from factory construction to hair spray in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Brown has a bill that would transfer many of the district’s powers to a super-regional board designed to cure almost every imaginable problem--smog, traffic, foul water, the works.

But some board members and environmental lobbyists fear the super-board might turn out to be soft on smog.

Wilson’s aides are also working on legislation that could affect the district. The uncertainty of what may emerge from the governor’s office is making smog regulators nervous.

To make the issue even more complicated, some powerful lobbyists are involved.

Among them are representatives of pro-regulation environmental organizations and laissez-faire business groups such as the California Manufacturer’s Assn.

The action on these proposals is taking place behind the scenes at present, overshadowed by the dispute over Wilson’s plans to cut welfare and balance his budget with even more reductions.

But by the time Sacramento’s chilly winter fades into pleasant spring, the issue is expected to receive plenty of attention in Wilson’s office and the Legislature.

I got an idea of the complex politics shaping the district’s future when I talked to Steve Thompson, who works for Speaker Brown, and Richard Sybert, Wilson’s local government expert.

Thompson is an intense, cigarette-smoking man who makes his office the only tobacco zone in a smoke-free building.

He’s a Big Government guy who has great faith in Sacramento’s wisdom.

As head of the Assembly Office of Research, he and his colleagues turn out ideas for Brown and other legislators. Two years ago, in a report titled “California 2000,” Assembly researchers concluded that local government was a mess.

Cities, counties and one-purpose agencies, such as the Air Quality Management District, were unable, the researchers said, to control the tide of pollution and congestion.

Based on that report, Brown introduced a bill creating seven powerful regional agencies. The South Coast Air Quality Management District would be, in effect, folded into the Southland’s new super-regional district. The Speaker’s bill has passed the Assembly and is now before the Senate.

Wilson wants to kill the Brown plan and Sybert is a key triggerman. If Thompson is a Big Government guy you’d have to classify Sybert as the opposite, Mr. Little Government.

That’s certainly the impression you get from the pictures on his wall in which he gazes respectfully at his ex-boss, former President Ronald Reagan, who hardly likes government at all.

The Wilson-Sybert local government plan hasn’t been announced. But from what Sybert told me, it won’t give the state or any regional agency additional power over local government.

“What Thompson (Brown’s aide) is saying is that we have to have command and control from the top because local politics is fundamentally corrupt,” he said. “I don’t believe it.”

Thompson said Brown’s plan won’t weaken the South Coast district.

Sybert said the same about the governor. In fact, another Administration source told me that there’s a feeling among those close to Wilson that the district is doing a good job, especially since it moved to speed up regulatory procedures last year.

South Coast district officials say they are taking the assurances of Wilson and Brown at face value.

But the district’s political position is weak this year. That’s because of the recession. Business and labor are protesting that strict environmental laws are driving business from the state. What the district fears is that somewhere in the fine print of the Brown and Wilson proposals will be language that will weaken air pollution enforcement in the Southland.

That’s why the district has hired a new lobbyist just to watch the Brown and Wilson proposals. Phil Doud will supplement the efforts of John White, who is already on the district’s lobbying payroll.

You need plenty of weapons in such dangerous times.