Clearing the Air: Smog Chief Appointee Reassures Senate Panel
By Chris Bowman, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.
Jul. 18–Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s newly appointed air pollution chief Tuesday disputed accounts that the governor has tried to slow progress on the state’s pioneering anti-global warming law.
Speaking before a state Senate committee, Mary Nichols said her mandate as chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board is to “speed up, not slow down” implementation of the law, which calls for a 25 percent reduction in climate-altering emissions by 2020.
The air board is facing legislative scrutiny after Schwarzenegger ousted Chairman Robert Sawyer last month. The board’s executive officer, Catherine Witherspoon, resigned a few days later.
Sawyer and Witherspoon blamed Schwarzenegger’s top aides for trying to directly manage the air board and its staff as though they were an extension of the governor’s staff.
Schwarzenegger has widely touted the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 — also known as Assembly Bill 32, adding to his international renown as an environmental hero.
The loss of the two air board leaders most responsible for implementing the act rattled legislative leaders who stake their own political images in the success of the act — the first in the nation to cap climate-changing emissions by mandate.
“We’re all in this together,” said Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, who presided over Thursday’s Senate Rules Committee hearing. “I take no delight in having missteps being publicized. It sets us back as a state.”
But Perata concluded the Nichols examination satisfied that she would faithfully implement the climate change law and resist outside pressures to weaken those regulations. Nichols must be confirmed by the full Senate within the next year to stay on the job.
He said anyone who thinks the Governor’s Office will be able to push her around “has another thought coming. She’s been around. … I expect her to make some people uncomfortable both on the environmental side and on the industry side.”
Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, who held a similar hearing earlier this month, said Nichols’ statements before the Senate committee show “that her command of the issues and enthusiasm for her role are impressive. She also recognizes the importance of AB 32 to California’s future.”
Nichols, a Democrat and an environmental policy lawyer, was chairwoman of the Air Resources Board under Gov. Jerry Brown in 1978. She later served as secretary of the California Resources Agency — which oversees forestry and fire protection; water, fish and game; and state parks — under Gov. Gray Davis.
Senators at Thursday’s hearing tried to pin down Nichols on her approach to reducing the heat-trapping or greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, which come from combustion of oil, coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels.
Schwarzenegger favors a flexible “cap-and-trade” approach that relies on market forces: Companies that more than meet the emission caps could sell pollution credits to those that underperform.
Democrats generally prefer more-traditional regulations and contend the governor is unilaterally pushing the former without legislative approval.
Nichols said the trading strategies “will play a role, but only after we have played out (regulations).”
She said the first three greenhouse gas-reducing measures adopted by the air board last month were “not the end” of the “early actions.” She has asked board staff to see if more measures can be taken before year’s end.
In firing Sawyer, Schwarzenegger administration officials said the governor was irked that the air board chairman had backed the air board’s June 14 vote to support a waiver giving San Joaquin Valley polluters until 2024 to comply with federal Clean Air Act restrictions.
The move appears to contradict the governor’s case before the Bush administration that California cannot afford to wait any longer for federal approval of its greenhouse gas limits on automobile exhausts, the governor’s aides said.
Under questioning from Sen. Roy Ashburn, R-Bakersfield, Nichols said she would have made the same decision as Sawyer because the San Joaquin Valley did not have the pollution controls needed to comply within the federal deadline.
The governor’s problem with Sawyer, a retired University of California, Berkeley, professor, went beyond the San Joaquin Valley, Nichols said.
“He didn’t have a relationship with the governor, and he didn’t have an interest in the political side of the job,” Nichols said.
Outside the hearing, Nichols added, “I’ve already sat down longer with the governor than my predecessor.”
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