Supervisors May Alter 4-Day County Workweek : Environment: Board majority worries that current schedule shortchanges public. But switching may undermine anti-smog effort.

Despite growing opposition to the county government’s four-day workweek, officials say it may be the only way to meet federal air-quality requirements.

While three county supervisors say they want to return to a regular workweek this fall, they add that they are bound by regulations that call for reducing the number of cars on the road.

As a result, Supervisors John Flynn, Judy Mikels and Frank Schillo will most likely push for staggered workweeks, giving employees a Friday off every two weeks.

“A four-day workweek is not the clock that everyone else works on,” Supervisor John Flynn said. “It causes people to wonder, ‘Well, what is the purpose of government if their services are out of sync with our needs?’ ”

Despite initial employee grumbling, the county implemented the four-day workweek in June, 1993, to help meet a federal requirement that says an average of 1.35 employees should commute in each car to the County Government Center in Ventura.

Under the law, the county must increase that average to 1.5 passengers by 1997. The county risks fines if it fails to meet these goals.

About 2,500 of the county’s 6,000 employees now put in four 10-hour days and get Fridays off. And after more than two years on this schedule, many do not want to see the old workweek reinstated.

“I’m sort of used to this now,” said Mary Beth Peterson, deputy public guardian, during her lunch break at the Government Center. “It would take an adjustment to go back.”

The Sheriff’s Department, district attorney, public defender, coroner and the county hospital still operate on a five-day workweek.

Though the compressed schedule means that some county offices are open longer hours, many members of the public still have not adjusted to the fact that many departments close on Fridays. Tiffany Warren, an assistant with Remax Realtors in Ventura, called the compressed workweek a “real pain” for real estate agents.

“A loan has to fund and you record the next day,” Warren said. “If you are ready to fund on Thursday, you now have to wait till Monday to record. The buyer has to pay interest on the funded money and they don’t have the weekend to move.”

Warren said the wrinkle has affected about 20 of the 40 deals her office has closed this year. Mindful of the public’s complaints, Supervisor Frank Schillo is working on proposals to keep the county clerk, county recorder and other offices that deal heavily with the public open five days a week.

Other supervisors are looking for new ways to meet, or even get around, Rule 210--the county’s version of the federal regulation that prompted the county to adopt the shortened workweek in the first place.

“This whole rule is a total, absolute failure,” Flynn said. “It’s a phony goal and it does not clean up the air.”

The rule came about when Congress amended the federal Clean Air Act in 1990. In areas like Ventura County where the smog problem is rated “serious,” the regulation requires large employers to offer their employees incentives to drive to work less.

Using the regulation’s logic, a higher average vehicle occupancy rate reflects a lower level of smog emission--fewer people are driving their cars. Lopping a day off the workweek and increasing hours is perhaps the easiest way to meet this goal.

Bill Mount, deputy director of the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District, said studies conducted in other areas that use the four-day workweek and other reduced schedules show a reduction in smog levels. But he could not locate the studies to say how much smog levels have decreased.

According to Mount, the four-day workweek reduces smog because more drivers stay off the road during peak hours--6 a.m. to 9 a.m.--on Fridays.

“By reducing congestion, it’s been shown that a compressed workweek can reduce emissions,” Mount said.

But Neil Moyer, president of the Environmental Coalition of Ventura County, says it is shortsighted to base a smog-reduction strategy on increasing average occupancy per vehicle. Moyer says that miles traveled and the condition of the cars on the road must also be factored into the equation.

“If I put three employees in one [highly polluting] car, that might be worse than putting three employees in three clean cars,” Moyer said.

Officials say the county has not monitored the amount of driving that employees do on their day off. Mikels said she is not convinced that the higher average vehicle occupancy rate the county gets for taking Fridays off translates into lower emissions.

“Did it dawn on anybody that those people who aren’t at the Government Center are running all over the county in their cars anyway?” Mikels said. “Does [the rule] really reduce emissions? I think it’s nothing more than having a rule for the sake of having a rule.”

The problem is, for now, Rule 210 is law. And if the supervisors decide to ditch the four-day workweek in favor of nine-day work period spread over two weeks, they will fail to meet the regulation.

“With the straight-line calculation, the numbers wouldn’t make it,” said Marty Robinson, the county’s deputy chief administrative officer.

That is why county officials are scrambling to come up with new ways to encourage employees to leave their cars at home. Some ideas the supervisors and others are tossing around include starting van pools, charging for Government Center parking and allowing more employees to telecommute.

A June study by the county, however, shows that, among the alternatives, providing cash incentives to employees is the only one that substantially reduces the number who drive alone in their cars.

In 1990 Patagonia Inc. launched a program that enables its 360 employees in Ventura to earn points each time they ride a bike, car-pool or walk to work. Patagonia employees can in turn tender their points for half a day off or company merchandise. Patagonia has an average vehicle occupancy rate of 1.45.

“You can earn vouchers for Patagonia clothing, bicycles or bike supplies from Avery’s Open Air Bicycles,” said Chip Bell, Patagonia’s employee transportation coordinator.

But Mikels said that providing county employees with monetary incentives to leave their wheels in the garage is too expensive and not a viable option for the county.

“I would really hate to think that I was cutting public health services and planning services so I could pay somebody not to drive their car when they shouldn’t be driving it in the first place,” Mikels said.

Air Pollution Control District officials said they do not plan to fine employers that explore different ways of reducing smog emission--even if the experiments lower their average vehicle occupancy rate.

Arnold Robbins, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency spokesman based in San Francisco, said the agency is taking a hard look at the federal requirements governing Rule 210.

“There have been concerned employers who feel the requirement is burdensome and not cost-effective,” Robbins said. “Congress has bills to revise the requirement or get rid of it completely in the Clean Air Act. The EPA has responded by putting together a work group to look at these concerns.”

Ventura County has successfully reduced smog. In the last 15 years, it has dropped 45%, according to the Air Pollution Control District. Because of the four-day workweek, the county has a better average vehicle occupancy rate than Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange counties, whose employees work nine days in a two-week period.

Nevertheless, if it were not for Rule 210, many officials said they would abolish the four-day workweek altogether.

“If it were a perfect world, I would go back to a five-day workweek, period,” Mikels said.