A bill sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, would have added three members to the South Coast Air Quality Management Board, which regulates air quality in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange counties.

And while that probably seems as dull as watching paint dry to nearly everyone who just read it, the measure had major implications for Republicans, local governments, business interests, environmentalists and residents of the broad district that has some of the most toxic air in the nation.

De Leon introduced the board-packing plan shortly after Republicans engineered a takeover of the board, swinging the focus from environmentalists to business interests. In December, the board disregarded SCAQMD staff recommendations and instead adopted rules on refineries backed by the oil industry, and in March it ousted the the longtime director who had been seen as anti-business.  

Representatives to the board are local city council members and county supervisors, appointed locally. De Leon’s bill would have added three seats to the 13-member board, appointed by the the Senate Rules Committee (which de Leon chairs), the Assembly speaker and the governor.

During floor debate, proponents argued that the measure was about adding diversity to the almost all-white board that had no Latinos, which defies the demographics of the heavily-Latino region. 

“Needless to say, I’m disappointed,” de Leon told CalWatchdog on Thursday. “Any time people of color are excluded from decision-making processes directly tied to their health and wellbeing, fundamental change is needed. This is a textbook example of institutional racism.”

De Leon added that Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, a Republican who also sits on the SCAQMD board, is termed-out and will soon be replaced by “someone far more progressive on the matter,” likely shifting the balance of power back to the environmentalists. 

However, of the current board’s ethnic composition, and the persistent lack of diversity, belies the fact that it’s largely been in Democratic, or environmentalist, control for years. De Leon did not say whether he’d reintroduce similar measures in the future.

Local control

Many opponents of the measure argued that the bill was a power grab by state policy makers at the expense of local control. And the large bloc of Democrats who either voted no or abstained suggest that the matter is not purely partisan.

“State versus local, that’s what this is about,” said Mike Madrid, a GOP strategist who helped devise the SDAQMD takeover. “It happened to be Republicans, but it was a state/local fight.”

But it was still a big win for Republicans, who are steadily slipping in their share of voter registration throughout the state, face the very real possibility of a Democratic supermajority in the Legislature next year and are not considered a consistent threat in any statewide election. For Republicans, local offices are where they can have a policy impact.

And despite several major policy victories for environmentalists, the defeat of the de Leon measure is a big win for the advocates of economic development. 

John Husing, the chief economist of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership, has been studying Southern California’s economy since 1964. His research suggests a correlation between the rise of poverty and the rise of environmental regulations in the state. Husing argues that while the policies have had a positive impact on air quality in the region, the policies are imbalanced in relation to business development and subsequently drive poverty, which affects health. 

“The whole air-quality, green initiative is having detrimental effect on moving people out of poverty and into the middle class,” Husing said of the SCAQMD region and the neighboring central valley.

Environment v. economy

Environmentalists have often said that any job loss associated with these air-quality policies would be offset by job creation in green sectors. However, Husing says statistics say that isn’t true, at least not in areas with high unemployment, like many communities in the SCAQMD.

Citing data from the California Employment Development Department and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Husing said from 2010 to 2016 the U.S. added 836,000 manufacturing jobs, compared to California which added 42,500 — a mere 5.1 percent. While the growth rate is on pace with with the national average, it lags by over 50 percent behind the state’s share of gross state product.

Husing said that the sluggish growth of manufacturing jobs in the state is attributed to three factors: Companies leaving, companies growing beyond the state’s borders and out-of-state companies refusing to grow in the state.

“Whose affected by that? It’s not the companies,” Husing said. “They’re doing fine some place else. It’s workers whose jobs are never created. … So you’re basically cutting off routes to the middle class for those workers.”

The vote

The measure failed just before the stroke of midnight on Wednesday, 30-36. And while it is seen as a victory for Republicans, the measure was largely defeated by the 14 assemblymembers, all Democrats, who didn’t vote.

Those who didn’t vote were Luis Alejo of Watsonville, Joaquin Arambula of Fresno, Kansen Chu of San Jose, Jim Frazier of Oakley, Rich Gordon of Menlo Park, Adam Gray of Merced (who was not present), Kevin Mullin of South San Francisco and Shirley Weber of San Diego. The six who didn’t vote and live in the region were Ian Calderon of Whittier, Eduardo Garcia of Coachella, Mike Gipson of Carson, Roger Hernandez of West Covina, Chris Holden of Pasadena and Patrick O’Donnell of Long Beach.

The studies give policymakers more information on the choices they will be making.

The first study is by economist John Husing, “Policy Choices & the Inland Empire’s Public Health.” He is the vice president of Economics & Politics Inc., a think tank that studies the Inland Empire. He also produced a PowerPoint summary of his findings, “Public Health, Socio-Economics & Logistics in the Inland Empire.”

Husing cited a University of Wisconsin study that found poor health was attributed to four factors:

• 40 percent socio-economics;
• 30 percent individual health behaviors;
• 20 percent medical care;
• 10 percent environmental causes.

Husing pointed out several “clashes” between socio-economic health and clean air regulations that end up worsening public health:

• Cal-EPA’s ozone reduction goal is not possible unless truck emissions are reduced below what current technology can achieve.

• Cal-EPA’s ozone reduction goal is not possible unless all vehicles in California are electrified. Yet currently, less than 1 percent of all registered vehicles in California are electric, according to SmartGridNews.

• There’s a clash between public health and the California Environmental Quality Act. When CEQA is too rigorously enforced, Husing wrote, it becomes the “Let’s sue until they run out of money act.” When that happens, it increases poverty, but serves such groups a “NIMBYS [Not in My Back Yarders], the Natural Resources Defense Fund, the Center for Biological Diversity … some lawyers, and unions.”

Although air pollution might be reduced, according to Husing, actual public health could be reduced by increasing poverty.

That’s because, citing the Wisconsin study mentioned above, Husing said the environment actually is the lowest on the rung of importance of the four health factors, but “it has been elevated almost to the exclusion of other priorities.”

Warehouses

What happened to manufacturing is now being proposed for trucking and transporting of goods.

In recent years, the Inland Empire has become a giant warehouse for Amazon, Target, Walmart and other companies shipping goods into the Los Angeles basin. Logistics and shipping jobs accounted for 16.7 percent of Inland Empire job growth from 1990 to 2012, and 27.6 percent of job growth from 2012 to 2013.

Husing made the case that it is such modest jobs that lift people out of poverty and into the middle class, and thereby into improved health. “Bluntly, it does our region little good if we create a pristine environment but let people increasingly die of the diseases and behaviors fostered by poverty,” Husing concluded.

Second study: Diesel trucks 

The second study concerns diesel trucks and the California Construction Trucking Association. Joe Rajkocacz, director of governmental affairs for the CCTA, explained the matter in an email to CalWatchdog.com.

He said the CCTA has been embroiled for the last four years in a lawsuit, which it lost, against the California Air Resources Board to stop the mandatory installation of $20,000 diesel exhaust filters on trucks and new, cleaner truck engines. The lawsuit contended the regulations caused undue economic hardship for the trucking industry. The regulations were imposed by CARB under AB32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

CARB contended the regulations were needed to make California’s air healthier.

On March 3, the the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected the CCTA’s appeal on the grounds it was filed in the wrong court. The CCTA, however, claimed it is exempt from California’s air pollution regulations under federal law and that is why it appealed in federal court.

CCTA said it now will appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. And it may take up the matter through other legal channels, such as challenging the science on which the air quality regulations are based. CARB contends exposure to diesel soot (particulate matter) causes premature deaths.

CARB’s science has reportedly been supported by a recent USC study showing that clean air is linked to stronger lungs in children. CARB is touting the USC study as a basis for its air pollution regulations, including on diesel trucks.

However, physicist and health researcher Jim Enstrom, Ph.D., MPH, said in a telephone interview the USC study ignores that children’s immune systems and lung capacity get stronger as they grow older. Enstrom is the author of a 2005 study that found there is no relationship between particulate matter in the air and mortality rates of the elderly.

Rajkovacz said that any relationship between diesel exhausts and mortality “doesn’t exist other than in the minds of rogue environmentalists both within and outside of the California Environmental Protection Agency.”

Future court proceedings will decide the legal issues. But no doubt the controversy of health and prosperity will continue.

And in op-ed pages, we’re seeing more and more pieces like this one by John Husing, an economist who works for the Inland Empire Economic Partnership who’s been a familiar figure for Southland journos for three decades. I’m pretty sure Husing’s a Democrat, but he’s given up on California’s Dem leaders:

“There was a time when California made it a priority to create jobs that would allow its most vulnerable residents to move up skill ladders into the middle class. No longer. Today, the Golden State is quietly seeing millions fall into poverty while their plight is met with a deafening silence from Sacramento. … today’s generation of Democratic leaders have virtually ignored this situation. …

“Geography is a key because one in every five people living in counties along the state’s central spine from San Joaquin County to the Mexican border plus Los Angeles are living below the federal poverty level (family of four: $23,550). In these 12 counties, 3.7 million people are poor including 29 percent of the area’s children. It is no surprise that 21 percent of residents have no health insurance.“

“Class is an issue because California is increasingly being divided between a well-educated elite who control the state and a huge marginally educated underclass that has remained largely invisible to them. The governing class tends to live in coastal counties, the Bay Area and Sacramento. Again, numbers tell the story. While 43.5 percent of the adults who live in the nine Bay Area counties have a bachelor’s or higher degree, 5.4 million of the 11.7 million people (46 percent) living in the state’s interior or L.A. County either stopped their educations with a high school diploma or did not get that far.”

Disconnect in CA Dems among rank-and-file, not electeds

Husing does a great job laying out the disconnect between impoverished, mostly inland Dems and elite, mostly coastal Dems. There’s also the disconnect between Dems who back teacher unions and Latino and African-American Dems who want minority students to get a higher priority that adult employees in school districts.

But these are disconnects that exist among rank-and-file Dems. Not elected Dems. In Sacramento, it’s insanely rare to hear a Dem say Dems are causing poverty. And outside of Gloria Romero, I can’t think of an elected Dem raising doubts about the CTA’s hegemony over California’s schools. This is bizarre.

Back to Husing, whose op-ed was in the Redlands Daily Facts:

“If California had appropriate policies for dealing with the poverty facing this huge portion of the state’s population, two efforts would be in evidence. First, an immediate goal would be to encourage sectors with few barriers to entry and with skill ladders up which marginally educated residents could move toward middle class incomes. Second, the state would be engaged in the equivalent of the GI Bill with short-course programs aimed at giving these adults the tools they need to move up these skill ladders. That is vital since the nature of the work in most sectors is becoming increasingly technical.

“Do we see this? No. …

“Unless California’s leaders, in particular given their majorities, those in Democratic Party, begin to understand the pain that their policies are inflicting on a huge share of the state’s population, we are destined to live with a growing and permanent underclass …”

Powerful stuff. Here’s hoping for more and more of this sort of thinking finally breaking through the conventional wisdom served up by the L.A. Times and the Sac Bee’s editorial pages, which never note that Californians are much worse off than they used to be — or that rank-and-file Democrats aren’t being served well by elected Democrats.