COMMENTARY ON THE AQMD : Letting the Agency Take Care of Business Is Good Economics : In boom times, the board was called weak. Now it’s vilified as over-aggressive. The truth is, it’s working.

For more than a year, the air has been clouded by so much misinformation about the South Coast Air Quality Management District, it’s a wonder they haven’t issued an intellectual health advisory.

The AQMD has been blamed for the recession and substituted for the collapse of the Soviet Union as the reason for the cutback in aerospace contracts. Enough. Let’s clear the air, look at the facts and move ahead.

Smog in our four-county basin is the worst in the nation. It eats away plastic, rubber, cement--and human lung tissue. It hurts children twice as much as healthy adults, and they benefit the most from cleaning it up.

Orange County produces one-fifth of our region’s air pollution. Ocean breezes blow most of it inland to Riverside and San Bernardino counties, leading some folks here to think we shouldn’t be concerned about air pollution. (Fortunately, the inland counties haven’t retaliated by dumping raw sewage into the Santa Ana River, which flows in our direction.)

Five years ago when the economy was strong, the AQMD was vilified as weak, ineffective and not doing enough to clean up the air. State legislators fumed and passed laws setting tough new smog-reduction requirements, like ride-sharing and cutting air pollution 5% a year, and increased fines on polluters to as much as $25,000 per day (a tactic we have never used).

The AQMD’s governing board obeyed the law. In 1989, we adopted a far-reaching plan outlining how this region could clean up the pollution problem by 2010 as required by Congress and the Legislature.

And we’ve made significant progress. The state recently documented that peak smog levels have fallen 25% over the past decade and population exposure has been reduced by 50%.

Now, our economy has turned sour with the national recession. The so-called “peace dividend” defense cutbacks have badly undermined our region’s aerospace industry.

So today, five years after being vilified as weak and ineffective, the AQMD is now vilified as “over-aggressive,” “stifling the economy” and “driving away jobs.”

Some of the perceptions of the AQMD--that we’re destroying manufacturing and charging exorbitant fees--are simply self-perpetuated myths unsupported by the facts. In 1990, of the 5,457 businesses we regulate in Orange County, 2,690 paid less than $150 in fees and 1,638 paid between $151 and $500. Over the past three years, district-wide only 7.4% of regulated businesses were fined, and 76% of the fines were $1,000 or less.

The decline in manufacturing jobs is a national tragedy. The same decline occurring here is paralleled in industrial states outside the AQMD’s jurisdiction, like New York, Illinois, Massachusetts and Texas.

An independent accounting firm found that our legislated Regulation XV ridesharing rule imposed a reasonable cost on employers, an average of $105 per employee per year, and has achieved 37% of its goal of reducing congestion and smog in just three years.

Another independent management audit of the AQMD, ordered by the Legislature in response to our critics, concluded that the AQMD was doing what the law required--and is doing a good job of it.

But some criticisms were right on target.

AQMD was guilty as charged: It took too long to issue permits, rules were inflexible, record-keeping requirements were unreasonable, and staff sometimes treated small businesses like big-time polluters.

To its credit, the AQMD’s management last November announced a series of reforms. Those reforms have speeded the permit process, achieved better compliance through education, increased assistance to small businesses and put us firmly on a path toward using market forces to clean up the air, rather than command-and-control regulations. All of these things will lower the cost of clean air.

Meanwhile, in response to my constituents, I created a Special Commission on Air Quality and the Economy to assess the impact of the AQMD’s rules on business. It held hearings, and got an earful.

But in fairness, most of the criticism dealt with issues the AQMD staff itself was trying to correct in its just announced New Directions reforms and the reorganization yet to occur.

Meanwhile, the special commission completed its study and recommendations in July. In August, our governing board adopted 35 of the 44 proposals, 79%. Some were already covered in the staff’s recent reforms, while some pushed staff to go further.

It takes time to overhaul a bureaucracy (look how long it takes legislators just to adopt a budget). But at least give the AQMD’s board and staff credit for initiating self-examination and internal reforms.

The industry ombudsman proposal would have merit were it not for the fact that the California Legislature has provided for precisely that type of position in the Health and Safety Code. The Legislature’s answer is the public adviser’s office, with clearly defined responsibilities written into state law that include an ombudsman-type relationship to business and the public.

However, in the spirit of the special commission’s recommendations and cooperation, it may be possible to do even more. Therefore, along with my AQMD board colleagues and representatives of the business community, I have proposed exploring additional steps we might take to provide small and medium-sized firms with an additional formal avenue to our board.

Most people are unaware of the AQMD’s efforts to assist industry:

* AQMD’s Technology Advancement Office is working with industries to develop new technologies that not only will clean the air but create new industries and jobs.

* A small-business assistance office has been set up to aid in the solution of problems peculiar to small businesses.

Sadly, while some businesses here grumble about cleaning up their acts, the AQMD is regularly visited by entrepreneurs and government officials from around the world who want to take advantage of the markets we’re creating.

Environmental concern is creating a worldwide market for innovative products. An Economic Opportunities Conference sponsored by the AQMD and the federal EPA will be held in Newport Beach Sept. 30-Oct. 1 to explore environmental opportunities presented by clean-air regulations.

Unfortunately, too many of the complaining businesses are wedded to technologies developed decades ago and never changed. That’s why they have trouble adjusting to clean-air laws and regulations. But we stand ready, willing and able to help them.

The AQMD is helping businesses develop new technologies and educating businesses on how to comply with the mandates imposed by the state and federal governments to protect our public’s health.

So, let’s cut the politics and get down to business, the business of creating new industries and jobs through new clean-air technologies.