Business Groups, Legislators Try to Rein In AQMD

The recession will not go away. The Southland’s giant strides toward clean air have shrunk to halting baby steps. The cost of environmental improvement continues to grow and is increasingly shared by smaller and smaller companies.

For unhappy legislators and business interests throughout the state, a new target is born: the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

At least 58 bills have been introduced in Sacramento this year taking aim at the state and regional bureaucracies that oversee California’s air quality. Of those measures, 18 home in on the huge and powerful South Coast district, which oversees 6,600 square miles of Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

Granted, no regulatory agency is without enemies, and the AQMD is no stranger to conflict. But legislators--35 Republicans and Democrats--are turning their attention to the air quality protector like never before in their scramble for ways to boost the dismal California economy and appease the angry business community.

One powerful business lobby, the California Chamber of Commerce, is seizing on the need to stoke the economy by pushing a package of bills that includes proposals to curtail the district’s authority. Other bills suggest capping the district’s $115-million budget and giving the Legislature power to ratify its rules.

“There’s no oversight. (The AQMD is) not held accountable to anyone,” said Assemblyman Richard Polanco, a Los Angeles Democrat who is sponsoring a bill to give the Legislature power to set the AQMD’s budget.

Tom Soto, director of the Coalition for Clean Air, a Venice-based environmental group, predicts that 1993 will be “the eco-battle year in the state Legislature. Regulatory reform is a great euphemism for deregulation. And people are listening. But deregulation is not economic development.”

The timing could not be worse for the beleaguered AQMD, which is trying to put into place the nation’s first major trading program in pollution credits and deal with sensitive issues such as air toxics regulation and transportation management plans by the middle of summer.

“It’s both a vulnerable and important time for us,” said James Lents, AQMD executive director. “There’s some danger of sliding back into the view that we can’t have clean air, or that it’s not worth it. That’s what sits in the balance.”

The firestorm over the AQMD was ignited in 1989, when the district’s governing board approved an air quality plan that made smaller companies begin sharing the burden with large industry to clean up the skies.

Small business operators who had never been regulated and generate relatively minor amounts of exhaust found they had to pay tens of thousands of dollars for anti-air pollution gadgetry. They turned to their legislators and complained.

In the Los Angeles district of Democratic Assemblywoman Gwen Moore, family-run barbecue restaurant owners complained to her after they were told to install filters costing up to $80,000.

Then, in July, 1990, the recession hit. It was a heavy blow to the AQMD, coming when the quickest and most obvious smog mitigation measures had been implemented--but had not solved the pollution problem.

“The political reality is that (the AQMD is) walking a tightrope without a net,” Soto said. “They used to have a good economy as a net. That’s gone. Now the question is: How can we achieve the most effective (air quality) plan while minimizing the economic impacts?”

The business assault picked up speed in 1991, when the district appointed the Special Commission on Air Quality and the Economy to address the concerns of industry. After months of hearings, the group recommended in July that the AQMD, among other things, establish an ombudsman for the regulated community, reduce fines on first-time corporate offenders and raise more money from taxes and fees on drivers rather than on business.

The district’s board rejected the most controversial of the commission’s proposals in August. The next month, members of the business community organized a candlelight vigil at AQMD headquarters.

According to a press release from Cody G. Cluff of the Economic Development Corp., a private nonprofit organization that promotes business retention and development in Los Angeles County, the vigil was designed to “mourn the loss of jobs resulting from stringent environmental compliance regulations that are causing companies to leave California.”

In a move that he said grew from frustration at working with the district’s board, Cluff filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get copies of five AQMD board members’ expense accounts: Chairman Henry W. Weeda and members Stephen Albright, Larry L. Berg, Henry M. Morgan and S. Roy Wilson.

He handed the information to the Orange County-based business group Accountability in Regulation. AIR analyzed the information and went on the attack in late January, widely distributing its findings.

“We were looking at some of the board members who were the most aggressive in turning down the recommendations of the committee (on air quality and the economy),” said Bruce Hughes, a founder and secretary treasurer of the group.

The group took greatest offense at Berg’s travel and expenditures during late 1991 and early 1992. During that time, Berg received more than $30,000 in travel expenses and per diem payments. The group criticized his trips to Sacramento, Washington, Europe and Canada and complained that he received per diem payments of $100 for teleconferences.

State law says that AQMD board members may receive $100 per day for up to 10 days a month when they attend meetings to conduct board business. The law does not define what a meeting is and does not say whether teleconferencing is acceptable. The board voted March 8 to ask executive director Lents for recommendations on expense policies.

Eugene F. Calafato, assistant to Lents, defended Berg’s travel and expenses in a memo, saying they were consistent with his duties as chairman of the board’s legislative committee and founder of the district’s Office of Technology Advancement.

Berg called the actions by Cluff and Hughes part of an organized “program of intimidation.”

“If you want to disagree with the travel policy, that’s a legitimate question,” he said. “But to personalize it, the way it was done, I was offended.”

Cluff said there is no organized business effort against the AQMD or other environmental regulators. But he acknowledges that economic pressures “are making people take a look at how we’ve been managing our environmental policies at this time.”

“If you go to Sacramento today, you see a continuing line of business people up there, going into legislative offices and talking about their problems,” he said. “Regulation is high on that list.”

They are not just haunting the Capitol to battle the district and air quality regulations, which many say could rival that other business demon--workers’ compensation. Cluff has gone from one visit to AQMD headquarters every four to six months to three visits a month to lobby and testify on behalf of business interests.

Todd Nicholson, president of the Industrial League of Orange County, had never been to the Diamond Bar offices until he served on the Special Commission on Air Quality and the Economy. Today, he visits at least every other month, doing battle for businesses that feel battered by what they call intrusive and unnecessary regulation.

Indeed, fighting the AQMD and air quality regulations now takes up more time in his organization than fighting against workers’ compensation. “I’m not sure how you quantify it, but a lot of people are spending a whole lot more time in monitoring, advocating and attempting to educate themselves to the ongoing activities of this agency and air quality issues,” Nicholson said.

Robert A. Wyman, a Los Angeles attorney representing a coalition of large businesses, said: “What you’re seeing is that there is a consensus among many in the business community that the district’s regulations have a sufficient impact on business activities that oversight is necessary.”

Oversight might be on the horizon. The 58 bills pending to curtail air quality regulators were written by more than one-fourth of the 120-person Legislature. Republicans and Democrats alike are carrying the legislation and invoking the same rhetoric to rebuke the board.

While Sacramento struggles with annual budget shortfalls, Assemblyman Polanco points to the agency’s budget growth over the past five years from $30 million to $115 million. He also criticizes the board for building its state-of-the-art headquarters in Diamond Bar.

“It’s a very nice Taj Mahal,” Polanco said. “It makes you wonder out loud what’s going on over there.”

From the other side of the aisle, Assemblyman Charles Quackenbush (R-San Jose) is pushing a bill to do away with the 34 regional districts, turning their authority over to the state Air Resources Board.

Quackenbush derides regional boards and staff as “unelected bureaucrats” who are “always trying to find a new way to levy more taxes.” His ire was raised when he heard of a proposal floated by the San Francisco Bay Area air district to charge $3 daily parking fees on lone commuters.

Quackenbush acknowledged that bills pushed by Republican lawmakers generally do not have much chance of passage in the Democratic-controlled Legislature. But perhaps, he said, the timing is right.

“I don’t see any Democrats jumping up and down and saying: ‘What a great agency that South Coast Air Quality Management District is,’ ” Quackenbush said.

For all the chest thumping, however, any bill to abolish the districts, or even rein them in, would face a hurdle in the Assembly Natural Resource Committee, where all such bills must be considered before reaching a floor vote.

Assemblyman Byron Sher (D-Palo Alto) chairs the committee and is the author and chief champion of the California Clean Air Act. Sher said Quackenbush’s approach is “like hitting them over the head with a 2-by-4.”

“The thing that I resist are broad-brush attacks,” Sher said. “There is an awful lot of sloganeering going on.”

Rhetoric or no, the attack could distract the AQMD at a crucial time. Its vaunted smog credits trading program to clean up the Southland’s notorious air pollution is behind schedule.

The final version of the plan was supposed to be voted on by the district board in April and be presented to state regulators by July. Instead, two of the program’s three main segments are now scheduled for a vote in June and the third in August.

Although much of the plan enjoyed early and widespread support, that is eroding as details come forth and environmentalists and business representatives have concrete regulations to argue about.

In addition, the district board will be voting in June on controversial new regulations to further control air toxics from industries, businesses and government facilities and set limits on cancer-causing emissions from new equipment.

“The next few months are the biggest test ever of the district’s viability as an organization,” said business attorney Wyman.

La Ganga reported from Los Angeles and Morain from Sacramento.