[Source: OC Register] In what appears to be the very definition of an out-of-control government agency, the staff of the South Coast Air Quality Management District has decided to pursue its own plan for raising the sales tax in four counties by a quarter-percent.
The SCAQMD doesn’t have the authority to put tax-increase proposals on the ballot, but on Monday, the staff revealed a new strategy: Conduct a poll to see if voters would be willing to pay the higher tax, then quickly get a bill introduced in Sacramento to give the agency the power to put the tax increase before the voters.
Orange County Supervisor Shawn Nelson and San Bernardino County Supervisor Janice Rutherford said they were blindsided by the staff’s plan to move forward and pursue legislation without first bringing the poll results to the board for consideration of next steps.
The SCAQMD is governed by a 13-member board comprised of 10 elected officials — four county supervisors and six city council members — and three people appointed by state elected officials. The agency is extraordinarily powerful. By issuing and enforcing regulations designed to meet ever-tightening federal and state air quality goals, the regulators hold vast power over business enterprises from refineries to dry cleaners.
However, the SCAQMD has authority only over stationary sources of pollution, not mobile sources like cars and trucks, which are regulated primarily by the state and federal governments. The agency acknowledges that even the complete shutdown of all stationary sources would not be enough to meet the region’s air quality targets.
Still, the law requires that the agency come up with a plan to explain how it will reach “attainment” of federal and state standards. The 2016 Air Quality Management Plan calls for offering about $14 billion in incentives to businesses to convert from diesel to electric vehicles over the next 15 years.
Where will the money come from? That was never in the plan.
The SCAQMD has received hundreds of millions of dollars from the state in cap-and-trade funds, money collected from fees charged to businesses that emit greenhouse gases. That’s not enough to fund the incentive plan, which calls for $1 billion per year. Rutherford said she would like to see the state do more, and opposes a regressive new tax that would “let the state off the hook.” Nelson said there is no emergency and taxes should be “absolutely the last resort.”
But Nelson and Rutherford were outvoted 3-2 at a special meeting of the legislative committee on Monday, and the staff’s plan squeaked through. The full governing board, which meets on March 2, will have the option to pull the report from the agency’s agenda and stop the staff from finding a legislator in Sacramento to sponsor the tax-authorization bill.
That’s exactly what the board should do. A powerful regulatory agency should not have the additional power to go directly to the voters to ask for tax increases, or the implied power to coerce regulated businesses into paying for campaign advertising to get the tax approved.
It’s the SCAQMD’s job to control air pollution. It’s everybody else’s job to control the SCAQMD.
The editorial board and opinion section staff are independent of the news-gathering side of our organization. Through our staff-written editorials, we take positions on important issues affecting our readership, from pension reform to protecting our region’s unique natural resources to transportation. The editorials are unsigned because, while written by one or more members of our staff, they represent the point of view of our news organization’s management. In order to take informed positions, we meet frequently with government, community and business leaders on important issues affecting our cities, region and state. During elections, we meet with candidates for office and the proponents and opponents of ballot initiatives and then make recommendations to voters.
Source: OC Register – The Editorial Board
February 16, 2018
