Centralized Smog Testing Loses Backing : Environment: Two members say pollution control board will reverse January decision that would have taken business from local shops.

Pressured by disgruntled car dealers and smog shop owners, Ventura County’s Air Pollution Control District board appears ready to drop its support for centralized smog-testing stations.

“My belief throughout my years of public services is that you can’t impose your will on the public,” Oxnard mayor and Air Pollution Control District board member Manuel Lopez said Thursday.

“If the people who are going to be affected don’t want something, then it’s pretty useless to try and force it down their throats,” he said.

County Supervisor Frank Schillo, another board member, said the centralized smog-testing stations would hurt small business and create inconveniences for motorists, who would be forced to get their vehicles tested at one station and repaired at another.

“We made a mistake by supporting this, and we’ve got to stop this right now,” Schillo said. “It’s bad for the citizens and it’s bad for business.”

Schillo and Lopez said they are convinced that a majority of the 10-member board will reject any further support of the proposal when the panel meets Tuesday.

“I’m very confident that this will not go forward,” Schillo said.

The vote Tuesday would reverse a decision made in January, when the board agreed to seek legislation expanding the agency’s authority over automobile pollution. That vote came after large industries complained that they were being unfairly singled out by smog regulators.

The legislation called for establishing several centralized smog-testing stations in the county in an effort to cut down on faulty inspections. The stations would do only smog tests and not repairs.

But auto dealers and smog-shop owners complained that the program would hurt the county’s 235 inspection and repair stations. In addition to losing their inspection business, they said, they would lose tens of thousands of dollars already invested in smog-testing equipment.

Despite those complaints, Richard Baldwin, the county’s air pollution control officer and chief proponent of centralized testing, urged the board in a letter this week to continue to support the proposal.

He wrote that automobiles are the worst polluters and that the new testing stations would have state-of-the-art equipment that would cut down on improper inspections. This would force repairs that would improve air quality.

In an interview Thursday, Baldwin said he still believes centralized testing is the best and most cost-effective way to reduce emissions and to meet a federal mandate to clean up the county’s air by 2005.

“The air pollution community knows that technically this is the best way to do it,” he said. “But politically it’s difficult.”

Baldwin initially got the idea for centralized smog testing from the Ventura County Economic Development Assn., which included the plan in its proposal on how to help the county clean up its air over the next decade.

The association, which includes many of the county’s largest businesses as its members, had argued that it would be less costly to reduce air pollution from cars than to tighten controls on industry and risk scaring away companies and local jobs.

But the association never took a formal position on the issue, and this week it sent a letter to the air pollution board saying that “it is premature to seek legislation authorizing a pilot centralized smog-check program for Ventura County.”

Association board member Janet Dillon said there isn’t enough information on the effectiveness of centralized testing in other areas of the country to support the proposal at this time.

She said there is also agreement among auto dealers and smog shop owners that the current smog-testing and repair programs can be improved and that more can be done to step up enforcement of the businesses that perform faulty inspections.

Dillon acknowledged, however, that in order for the county to meet its clean air goals, other smog reduction programs must be explored. “It’s an issue that’s not going to go away,” she said.

Charles McConica, owner of McConica Motors in Ventura, said that only 15% or 20% of the vehicles on the road are violating emission laws and that regulators need to focus on them, rather than going after the general public with centralized testing.

“It would be a terrific inconvenience for the public,” he said. “And the benefits are questionable.”

County Supervisor John Flynn, an Air Pollution Control District board member who voted against centralized testing last January, said he believes vehicles that run on alternative fuels such as electricity or compressed natural gas will ultimately resolve the emissions issue.

Meanwhile, he said, the centralized testing proposal is not likely to go anywhere.

“It’s just another harebrained idea,” he said. “We don’t need another harebrained idea. I hope it goes down the tubes.”