Warner Bros. Executive Named to Air Quality District Board

The Senate Rules Committee on Thursday appointed Mee Hae Lee, an executive for Warner Bros., to the board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, replacing clean-air activist Sabrina Schiller and triggering sharp criticism from state Sen. Tom Hayden.

Hayden (D-Santa Monica) said Lee would tilt the agency “toward pollution, congestion and development.”

The committee vote, taken in a closed-door session, was 4-0 in favor of Lee, a Korean-American attorney, a Senate source said. Liberal Democratic Sen. Nicholas Petris of Oakland reportedly abstained. Hayden is not on the Rules Committee.

Lee, 36, governmental affairs manager for Warner Bros.’ real estate planning and public affairs department, will succeed Schiller as the Senate’s appointee to the 12-member board of the agency, which covers Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Lee will be paid $100 per meeting.

Schiller has been strongly supported by environmental protection groups during her 11 years on the board, but she was told last month by Senate leader David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) that she would not be reappointed.

In a letter to Roberti, Hayden described Lee, a former aide to City Councilman Marvin Braude, as a “corporate real estate lobbyist” for Warner Bros. and a former lobbyist for the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency.

Roberti defended Lee as a “strong environmentalist,” who, he said, would recognize that air quality decisions must be made “in the context of the most staggering unemployment problems we have ever had in Southern California.”