Ex-White House Official to Head Clean-Air Board

Gov. Pete Wilson on Friday appointed a former official in the Reagan and Bush administrations as chairwoman of the powerful California Air Resources Board, which is facing unprecedented pressure from industry to scale down its tough clean-air regulations.

Jacqueline E. Schafer, who starts Monday, replaces Jananne Sharpless, who stepped down as ARB chairwoman Thursday when Wilson asked her to serve instead on the California Energy Commission, a less influential state board.

“My take on the direction the governor wants to go is ‘steady as she goes,’ ” Schafer said in a telephone interview from Sacramento.

“I believe that means he feels we were on the right course toward achieving air-quality goals.”

Schafer was most recently an assistant secretary of the Navy in the Bush Administration with oversight of military environmental policies, and served from 1984-89 on the White House Council on Environmental Quality. The council had been assailed by environmentalists as favoring deregulation of business.

Wilson on Friday also unseated another longtime ARB board member and appointed Lynne T. Edgerton, vice president of CALSTART, a nonprofit consortium of California industries and government working to produce electric cars and other transportation technologies.

Edgerton is an environmental activist who was an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group involved in Southern California air-quality issues. She replaces Betty Ishigawa of Salinas, who served on the board for 10 years and had a history of voting in favor of stringent air-pollution controls.

Environmentalists fear that the air board under Schafer’s leadership will be more accommodating to the influential industries it regulates, especially the oil and auto industries, but welcomed the appointment of Edgerton.

Larry Berg, a USC political science professor who stepped down from the South Coast Air Quality Management District board this year, called Schafer a “hard-line Reaganite,” but said the Edgerton appointment “showed the governor’s pragmatic side.”

“I think the governor is in a very uncomfortable position. He has an election coming up and he has all kinds of problems with conservative Republicans,” Berg said. “You have an accumulation of complaints on the part of big oil and the car makers . . . The proof will be in what happens in the next 13 months.”

Denny Zane, executive director of the Coalition for Clean Air, said of Schafer’s appointment: “Let’s put it this way, we would never have looked within the Reagan Administration for leadership in environmental issues.”

The ARB’s main role is to set standards for combatting air pollution from motor vehicles, and under Sharpless’ leadership since 1985 it adopted ambitious rules that forced industries to sell electric and methanol-powered cars and cleaner-burning gasoline and diesel fuel in California.

In announcing the new appointments, the governor’s office stressed that the effort to combat air pollution will not waver.

But Veronica Kun, a National Resources Defense Council scientist in Los Angeles who handles air-quality issues, said the two appointments are a sign that the Wilson Administration “is hedging (its) bets.”

“At best it’s a wash, and it’s a dangerous signal,” she said. “It’s great that he appointed Lynn, but it’s not a net gain. He slapped the ARB’s hand by removing its chair and taking away the strong environmental leadership the board had.”

But she called Edgerton a “solid environmentalist and a good attorney” who will be “a great addition to the ARB.”

In an interview Friday, Edgerton said Wilson has “an outstanding record” on air-quality issues.

“I don’t see any factual evidence of the governor backing down. I’m looking at the record, and the record the governor has had on clean air . . . is very strong,” Edgerton said.

Although their appointments require state Senate confirmation, the law allows them to begin their jobs immediately when the Legislature is not in session.

Schafer, 48, of Virginia, has no experience in California political or environmental issues, but has been involved with federal environmental policy in Washington, D.C., and New York for more than 20 years. She served as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s New York region under Reagan from 1982-84 and was a staff member of the U.S. Senate committee on the environment and public works from 1977-82.

The change at the top of the ARB comes at a time when opposition to California regulations is intensifying from industries, especially from the auto and trucking industries, which call them costly and unreasonable.

Sharpless said she left in a “mutual agreement” with Wilson, but many officials involved in air quality issues insist the governor forced her to step down. Sharpless, appointed chairwoman by former Gov. George Deukmejian, had strong support from environmentalists.

Most recently, she came under fire from industry Oct. 1 when an ARB rule went into effect requiring diesel fuel in California to be reformulated to burn even cleaner than required under new federal standards. Although truckers had complained that the rule contributed to spot fuel shortages and higher prices, Wilson on Friday reaffirmed his support for it.