Victory for SB 719: expansion of the Valley air board

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the bill to expand the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District board from 11 to 15 members on Oct. 14. The board would add two more city council members to the three already included and would add two members with expertise in the health issues of Valley air pollution, to be appointed by the governor with the advice and consent of the state Senate. Eight county supervisors, one from each of the Valley counties, would continue to sit on the board. One of the two "public" members must be a physician with expertise in the health effects of air pollution; the other must be a member of the public with scientific expertise on the problem.

Badlands Journal talked with Mary-Michal Rawling, program manager for the Merced-Mariposa Asthma Coalition, a strong supporter of the bill (SB 719, authored by state Sen. Mike Machado, D-Linden). Rawling said the bill has had quite a history. This is the fifth year Machado has introduced it.

"We kept supporting it," she said. "He saw a lack of political will on the Valley air board."

Originally, four public members were proposed, but later versions of the bill dropped two proposed appointees with expertise in environmental justice issues and land-use planning. In the interest in creating a bill that faced considerable opposition in the state Legislature, the advocates for it, including the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition (an umbrella group including Rawling's asthma coalition), agreed to drop back to two public members on advice from state Assembly members who supported the bill.

The two new city council members will represent cities larger than 100,000 people. Under the former rules, the three city council seats were rotated among three regions in the Valley, causing a lack of consistent representation by the Valley's largest cities -- Bakersfield, Fresno, Modesto and Stockton.

There is nothing radically groundbreaking about having governor-appointed members of air pollution district boards. Assembly committee staff analysts note that

State appointments to air districts are not unprecedented. On the South Coast Air Quality Management District board the Governor, the Speaker of the Assembly, and the Senate Rules Committee each have the authority to appoint one member.

This year's successful attempt to pass the legislation got through the state Senate without much problem but got bottled up in the Assembly. However, on the floor vote, a combination of supporters voted for it and others, like Assemblywoman Cathleen Galgiani, D-Livingston, abstained rather than voting against it. The bill was controversial in Galgiani's district. Opponents with ties to her district included the air board itself, Merced County, the Merced County Farm Bureau, associations of cotton ginners, dairies, food processors, the Wine Institute and the state Association of Counties. However, there was strong support as well: Lee Andersen, Merced County Superintendent of Schools, Jim Sanders, Merced City Councilman, the county asthma coalition, the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition Steering Committee, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Union of Concerned Scientists, the American Lung Association of California, Sierra Club and Latino Issues Forum among others.

Statewide opponents included the California Farm Bureau and the California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance.

Rawling said that the practical effect of the board expansion would give more voice to advocates for clean air, a larger voice for health issues and would be a more broadly based board. More debate about the health issues arising from Valley air pollution is needed, she said, as the Valley air board is directed by its own mission statement:

The San Joaquin Valley Air District is a public health agency whose mission is to improve the health and quality of life for all Valley residents through efficient, effective and entrepreneurial air quality-management strategies.

Rawling said a lot more debate is needed and that currently, the board tends to rubber stamp staff recommendations.

Badlands Journal suggested that the quality of debate would be largely a function of the quality of these additional appointments. Rawling replied, "It is our responsibility to get someone we need. The public avenue is through due diligence to get the state Senate to approve responsible people and to give the governor a good slate of candidates and make sure he nominates good people."

The Merced-Mariposa County Asthma Coalition, Central Valley Air Quality Coalition Steering Committee and their supporters have been very effectively diligent this year and the San Joaquin Valley Air Quality District, controlled by Valley county supervisors, has been blatantly remiss.

On April 30, the SJVAQD voluntarily downgraded the status of Valley air quality through three intermediate categories of pollution from "serious" to "extreme," forestalling the federal test for attainment of 8-hour ozone levels out until 2024. Already, "every year we duke it out with LA basin for worst air quality in nation," Rawling noted.

In the view of Badlands Journal, this was but one in a long series of squalid sellouts by the board to finance, insurance, real estate, agricultural, petroleum and the state Department of Transportation special interests at the cost of clear, widely documented public health and safety dangers arising from increased Valley air pollution.

In addition to pushing the deadline out to 2024, forestalling a possible freeze in federal highway funds until that time, which will produce yet more population growth and real estate development, which will in turn produce yet more air pollution, the Valley air board pulled a new trick out of its arcane, special-interest driven regulations: the Black Box. Evidently, about half of the pollution awakes unknown new technology to be remedied.

Valley clean air advocates showed up at the California Air Resources Board meeting on June 14, where the district's decision had to be approved, with black coffins labeled "Black Box," they wore only black clothing and carried stickers with a line through "2024." CARB dutifully approved the district's decision. However, state board member Dee Dee d'Adamo, top staff for Rep. Dennis Cardoza, Shrimp Slayer-Merced, called for formation of a task force to explore the possibility of more rapid attainment. The task force will convene in Merced on Nov. 7, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Tenaya Middle School. The task force will report to CARB later next month.

The governor fired Robert Sawyer, chairman of CARB, shortly after the state board's decision, replacing him with Mary Nichols, former secretary of the state Department of Resources during the Gray Davis administration. Rawling said that so far, Nichols has been "responsive." Other members of the Merced public remember Nichols' orchestration of the railroading of environmental permitting process for UC Merced, under pressure from d'Adamo's previous employer, former Rep. Gary Condit, and her present employer, Cardoza, then a state Assemblyman, and the governor's office, where both of Condit's children were employed.

Rawling said the goal of Valley clean air advocates is to keep pushing for more rapid attainment and to get an enforceable commitment in writing for an earlier date.

Diana Westmoreland Pedrozo, executive director of the Merced County Farm Bureau said the reason the Farm Bureau opposed the board expansion was because there wasn't much faith in some quarters in the governor's appointees. She said the interests she represents have had much more success explaining their positions to the air board than they have to the Valley water quality control board, which is composed entirely of political appointees. While Pedrozo said she "applauded public members," she and the interests she represents don't believe most physicians or other scientists know much about the field of health and air pollution. She said that in the Valley air board, she saw much evidence of staff and board-member interaction. "It doesn't look like the staff is in total control." By contrast, her experience with the water board suggested total staff control of the board.

Pedrozo's basic point was that "political" appointees aren't as responsive as appointees from elected local legislatures (county supervisors and city councils). In the debate over this legislation, opponents present the latter group as less politically appointed than appointees of the (elected) governor.

Rawling said she thought the additional board members would serve to make the board less "politicized." We thought it might have the opposite effect, at least under certain circumstances. The public experts could challenge air board staff's data more effectively than the ordinary county supervisor, who, on the other hand, would be a familiar face for Farm Bureau staff to lobby on the changes being forced in agricultural practices by both air and water pollution regulations in the Valley. Perhaps, someday Pedrozo could be negotiating with her brother-in-law, a former farmer and current chairman of the Merced County Board of Supervisors. It's hard to imagine adding two more city council members would be good news for agriculture, but the supervisors of what remain for the meantime the most productive agricultural counties in the nation still control the Valley air board with eight appointees.

For a public tired of seeing more letters to the editor from the executive director of the air board extolling the healthiness of our air whenever local breezes shove the pollution elsewhere for a few days, this is a victory. Sen. Machado and the clean air advocates in the Valley are to be thanked for their consistent, long-term effort.

However, euphoria is not called for. Adding two city council members to the three existing city council members and the eight county supervisors simply makes a board with 13 members marinated in the pro-growth/smart growth/balanced growth dogmas that nearly all elected officials of municipal and county land-use authority councils and boards must espouse in order to be acceptable to the special interests that dominate their jurisdictions. The two public members, presumably not already absorbed into the growth ideology, will have their hands full arguing against doing the "hard, right thing" on every vote the air board takes. They will be under great pressure to adopted a "balanced" view in a region where there has not been any balance for years. And they will be under an equal amount of pressure from air quality advocates to speak and act on behalf of public health and safety. May the advocates, the governor and the senators find people of sufficient integrity and strength of character to fulfill the role to think out of the Black Box.