AQMD to Lay Off About 120 Employees Next Summer : Pollution: Budget cuts require a 13% reduction in staff. Executive says that clean air efforts will be slowed down, but that the agency isn’t going out of business.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District will lay off about 13% of its staff next summer in a cost-cutting move that could hamper the region’s clean air program, Executive Officer James M. Lents announced Friday.

Prompted by a deepening budget shortfall, the layoff of about 120 employees means the AQMD’s staff will be one-third smaller than it was in 1991. A hiring freeze, layoffs and early retirements reduced the staff last summer from 1,163 employees to 915.

“There will be little choice but to have a significant number of layoffs in summer, 1994,” Lents said in a meeting with his staff. “I can’t give you an exact number, but I would estimate this means that about 120 jobs will be cut.”

The agency, which is responsible for reducing air pollution in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, is already under fire from state and federal officials for being lax in enforcing rules that target industrial pollution.

The departments and programs that will be scaled back have not yet been identified. But Lents said the cuts will mean the AQMD will have less staff to enforce and adopt rules required by the federal Clean Air Act.

“I can’t say our clean air effort won’t suffer, because it will to some degree. I expect it will impact enforcement and our ability to meet our Clean Air Act obligations, and developing rules and plans,” Lents said in an interview.

“I don’t think it’s tantamount to us going out of business,” he added, “but if we’re going to live up to our clean air plan, there are a lot more programs we need to put into place and they will probably come into place a lot slower than we would like.”

The layoffs are prompted by a $7.5-million shortfall that the AQMD expects by the time the next budget year begins July 1. The AQMD expects $100.1 million in revenue next year, but it needs $107.6 million to continue operating at this year’s levels.

The AQMD gets about three-quarters of its funding from annual fees that businesses pay based on the volume of air pollutants they emit. But the recession has reduced industrial production and new smog programs have lowered emissions, which leave the agency with less money next year.

Also, the Legislature recently adopted laws that limit the fees the AQMD can impose on businesses. The fees had increased dramatically in the late 1980s, prompting growing opposition from businesses and the Legislature.

Identifying where to cut jobs will take a month to 10 weeks, prompting anxiety among the agency’s employees.

One cost-cutting move the AQMD will take is to shut down at least two of the 37 smog measuring stations in the four-county area.