TV Host Hewitt Named to Air Quality Board : Pollution: Newport Beach lawyer has criticized the state panel in the past for what he said were cumbersome regulations.

Conservative television commentator Hugh Hewitt was appointed by Gov. Pete Wilson to the South Coast Air Quality Management District Board, officials said Friday.

Wilson’s spokesman Paul Kranhold said Hewitt will bring to the board “a great deal of experience in public policy, including an extensive background in air quality issues affecting Southern California.” For example, Kranhold pointed out, Hewitt is a partner with the law firm Hewitt & McGuire in Newport Beach, which specializes in federal environmental and administrative law.

“He will help us cut through the red tape so that we won’t drive businesses out of the state,” Kranhold said, “and yet still provide environmental protection for the people.”

Hewitt, who once defended developers in the California gnatcatcher battle, also has initiated at least two citizen task forces to analyze what he contended to be cumbersome regulations of the board.

Hewitt, 39, is a co-host of KCET-TV’s “Life and Times” and has his own radio show on KFI-AM. A Harvard University graduate who went to the University of Michigan’s law school, Hewitt served as a White House assistant counsel under President Ronald Reagan. He also was executive director of the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in 1990.