Effort to Oust Air Quality Official Suffers Blow : Politics: An Assembly committee rejects a bill sponsored by Sen. John Lewis (R-Orange) that would have made it easier for cities to replace Henry Wedaa with someone more sympathetic to business.

An effort by an Orange County state senator to oust Yorba Linda Councilman Henry Wedaa from his post as chairman of the powerful South Coast Air Quality Management District was dealt a critical blow Monday in a key legislative committee.

The Assembly Natural Resources Committee, long a graveyard for anti-AQMD legislation, balked at a bill authored by Sen. John Lewis (R-Orange) that would strip Wedaa of the protection that has kept his enemies at bay.

Lewis’ bill, which had already cleared the Senate, failed to get the seven votes needed to escape the 13-member committee, which deadlocked 5-5. The three committee members who didn’t cast a vote on the measure, which can be put up again for a vote at the group’s next meeting, are all Democrats unlikely to side with Lewis, a conservative Republican.

If signed into law, the measure would have shot down the two-thirds vote needed of city councils in Orange County to replace Wedaa, the region’s representative on the AQMD. Instead, approval by a simple majority of the county’s cities would have been required.

It was that two-thirds threshold that kept Wedaa in power last year during an unsuccessful attempt to unseat him and appoint Costa Mesa Mayor Peter Buffa, a conservative considered more sympathetic toward the business community. Buffa was backed by a majority of the cities but failed to get the two-thirds necessary to dethrone Wedaa.

Lewis contends that Wedaa, whose moderate stance on air quality issues doesn’t please conservatives, would have been quickly dumped if the vote requirement had been eased. The anti-Wedaa effort was supported by the Orange County League of Cities and several municipalities, including Anaheim, Fullerton, Huntington Beach and Santa Ana.

“We’re disappointed that the committee disregarded the feelings of local residents in Orange County,” said Christopher Jones, Lewis’ chief of staff. “They’ve given Mr. Wedaa a free ride.”

Wedaa could not be reached for comment.

In other action, the committee rejected an anti-AQMD bill authored by Lewis that would have sharply reined in the authority of air quality districts around the state and prevented them from requiring employers to charge workers for parking, a tactic being eyed by regulatory officials.

But the committee approved a third Lewis bill that caps the South Coast AQMD budget at its current level and limits future increases to no more than the cost of inflation.