Hewitt Is Rejected for Air Quality Post

Hugh Hewitt, a Newport Beach attorney and Southern California broadcast personality, was rejected Monday as Gov. Pete Wilson’s appointee to the board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

The three Democrats on the five-member state Senate Rules Committee, which screens gubernatorial appointees for confirmation, voted against him. The two Republicans voted for him.

Hewitt, 40, a former Reagan administration official, had served on the board since last May without confirmation. He was opposed by environmental groups that said he was biased in favor of businesses regulated by the clean-air agency.

No witnesses testified in his support.

The regional agency is responsible for implementing steps to clean up the air in Orange, Los Angeles and parts of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, affecting some 12 million Southern Californians.

Hewitt’s law firm represents major California landowners and businesses whose operations are regulated by the district, and Hewitt once defended developers who wanted to build on land inhabited by the endangered gnatcatcher.

He also initiated at least two citizen task forces to advocate alternatives to what he regarded as cumbersome regulations of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

In 1992, he wrote in the National Review that “the No. 1 killer of business in California is the AQMD.”

Wilson had selected Hewitt to fill a slot on the 12-member air quality board, which required that the member have experience as an “air pollution specialist.” But Rules Committee Chairman Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), president pro tem of the Senate, challenged Hewitt’s qualifications. He also questioned whether Hewitt, as a provocative broadcaster, was properly suited for policymaking as a board member.

Hewitt said the vote “wasn’t unexpected. I knew it was coming. I did the best I could for 12 months . . . but it’s clear that the Democrats are still in charge. It’s very much an anti-business board.”

Wilson spokesman Sean Walsh said the rejection of Hewitt “was shortsighted . . . there is a smattering of politics being played here.”

A co-host of “Life and Times,” a weekly public affairs program on KCET-TV, Hewitt has gained recognition in Orange County for his conservatism. The show gathers a group of divergent commentators to debate current issues.

A Harvard University graduate who went to law school at the University of Michigan, Hewitt was appointed White House assistant counsel under President Reagan. In 1990, he served as executive director of the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace.

Times staff writer Thao Hua contributed to this story.