Unhealthy Legislative Fumes

A package of five bills introduced in Sacramento should strain the public’s credulity as to the Legislature’s commitment to improving air quality in Southern California. Silly on their merits and punitive in their intent, these bills would do little to repair the fraying consensus on how to cut smog and could do much harm.

The measures would strip the South Coast Air Quality Management District of much of its authority for cleaning up the region’s air. They would require legislative approval of all AQMD spending and provide for direct election of a district board member from each county. One bill would repeal a major rule the AQMD enacted last December requiring large employers to help fund projects that cut car and truck exhaust. Repeal would reverse progress by increasing auto emissions in the region.

Sponsors claim that these bills are intended to stop “onerous regulations.” But the truth is that, faced with growing political and business resistance to nearly all AQMD proposals, the agency has done little in recent years, onerous or otherwise, to offend polluters.

But AQMD officials have vowed that they will fight these bills, and they are right to do so. Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) and like-minded legislators have made no secret of their desire to eliminate the agency altogether. And the Legislature, which cannot pass its own budget on time, wants to assume fiscal responsibility for another agency? It’s laughable.

A signal of alarm comes from influential industry groups, including the California Manufacturers Assn., who fear that state control will produce gridlock at the local level, not cleaner air. They are right to be upset.