Fee Hikes Would Aid Smog Fight

Californians could soon pay $2 more to register their cars and 75 cents more to buy a new tire as part of a deal -- brokered this week by the Schwarzenegger administration and Democratic lawmakers -- to help fund an expansion of air pollution programs.

The package of proposed increases, which still must be approved by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, would raise about $90 million more a year to help fight smog. It would increase state tire fees to $1.75 per tire from $1 and allow local air pollution control districts to raise -- to $6 from $4 -- a vehicle registration surcharge that helps fund environmental programs.

Motorists would also receive the option of donating $10 a year to air pollution programs by checking a box on their DMV registration forms, a voluntary approach favored by Schwarzenegger’s environmental protection secretary, Terry Tamminen. State officials estimate that 4% of drivers would make the contribution, raising $10 million annually.

The legislation that includes the increases, AB 923 by Assemblyman Marco Firebaugh (D-Los Angeles), requires only simple-majority approval in the Legislature rather than the two-thirds majority that would be needed for a tax increase.

If the bill became law, local air districts would have the authority to approve the vehicle registration increases. Officials said hikes would almost certainly occur in urban areas such as Los Angeles and San Francisco. Air districts in other parts of the state, including the Central Valley, might be more reluctant to implement them, officials said.

The latest deal was cut -- after months of negotiations -- by Democratic legislators, officials in the California Environmental Protection Agency and lobbyists for environmental groups, oil companies and agricultural interests.

Participants in the talks initially hoped to reach agreement on an even bigger set of fee increases that would have funded a large-scale program to get some of the worst polluting old cars and trucks off the state’s roads. Such vehicles make up less than 10% of all cars and trucks, yet account for half of the worst types of pollution from passenger vehicles. Agreement on that larger package proved elusive.

The accord that negotiators did reach comes on the heels of a Schwarzenegger administration proposal to raise smog fees in exchange for giving motorists extra time before smog checks are required on new vehicles -- an idea that was eventually approved as part of the state budget and that is expected to bring in $60 million a year.

Together, the new fees would generate more than $150 million to repair or retire heavily polluting school buses and agriculture equipment. Some of the money might also be used to scrap older cars and trucks.

Air quality officials consider those programs to be among the most cost-effective ways of cutting nitrogen oxides and the other pollutants that form smog. The programs have been supported by industry groups as well as environmental advocates.

“This would be huge,” said Rob Oglesby, chief lobbyist for the California Air Resources Board. “A lot of people who don’t always see eye to eye on these issues have spent months trying to work together, and we have found some common ground.”

Not everyone left the negotiations satisfied; automobile industry representatives oppose some of the fees.

The programs that would receive the new money have largely been financed with state bond money and were in danger of losing future funding because of the state’s profound budget problems.

Expanding the programs with the new money would reduce smog-forming pollutants by about seven tons a day statewide, air board officials estimated. More important, officials said, the expansion would make new money available to fix or replace old school buses that expose children to diesel exhaust. The legislation targets school buses built before 1977 that not only are heavy polluters, but were also made in an era of fewer safety standards.

“We’re pleased we have come to agreement on a fairly large reduction program,” said Bob Lucas, a consultant for the California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance, an umbrella group that includes many of the state’s largest corporations. “I’m not sure that the universe of folks affected by the tire fee shares our view, but we think it is a fair deal.

“It’s a pretty significant package. While the money is not small, it is a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed” to identify, repair and replace all the heavily polluting cars and trucks, Lucas added.

Environmental groups also had hoped for more, and pushed for new fees on oil at the wholesale level to fund a larger program. But they could not find agreement with industry groups, which in return sought a rollback in regulations against refineries and factory smokestacks. The two sides decided to put that fight aside for now.

“The environmental community still feels that fuel fees of a penny or two [per gallon] on diesel and gasoline are imperative,” said Jose Carmona, a lobbyist for the Sierra Club. “They are the products that, once burned in internal combustion engines, are responsible for a lot of the pollution in the air. But we could not reach agreement on that, and we felt that we should do what we could for the time being.”