Air Board Deadlocks on Officials’ Ouster

In a surprise move, half of the Southland’s air quality board on Friday mounted an effort to oust the agency’s top-ranking executives, including Executive Officer James M. Lents, who has served as the region’s top smog-fighter for more than 10 years.

After a fiery debate, the South Coast Air Quality Management District board deadlocked 6 to 6 in each of several votes to decide whether to renew the executives’ contracts. The contracts of Lents, his two top deputies--Barry Wallerstein and Pat Leyden--and two other top staff members expire at the end of July.

Several board members say Lents and his staff have been unresponsive to their needs, have wielded too much power and have feuded with conservative state legislators over the direction of the nation’s largest and most powerful smog agency. Some said he has not been accommodating enough to local industries and businesses in drafting and enforcing smog rules.

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The board will take up the issue again next month, and unless one member changes his or her mind and the contracts are renewed by July 31, the top staffers will have to leave the AQMD.

The two most conservative board members, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich and Orange County Supervisor James Silva, have often accused Lents and his staff of paying too little attention to economic concerns and mounting too aggressive a battle against smog.

The six board members who supported Lents and his team are mostly advocates of tough smog controls, including all four members representing Riverside and San Bernardino counties, which experience the worst air quality.

AQMD board member and Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin Braude, who leaves both positions next month, said firing the top leadership will throw the agency into disarray at a time when it needs to keep making progress toward meeting federal deadlines for cleaner air.

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Several top business leaders--including representatives of the powerful oil and aerospace industries--joined environmentalists Friday in urging the board to retain Lents and his team, saying he strikes a fair balance between the economy and the environment.

Lents, 53, seemed stunned by the deadlocked vote. When named executive officer in 1986, he took an idealistic and strong clean-air stance regardless of cost and social impact. But he has moderated his position and eased enforcement of rules in recent years as the board has grown more conservative.

Although he had clearly been at odds with several board members, few observers thought Lents’ job was at risk when the board took up its scheduled review of the contracts. But two of the 12 board members were newly appointed, including Gov. Pete Wilson’s sole appointee, businessman Cody Cluff, and both voted against Lents and the four other managers.

After the vote, Lents said he has received “no indication at all” from board members as to the reason for the effort to remove him. As far as his next move is concerned, he said he will “have to think about it and keep the agency running.”

After the debate over whether to oust Lents, the board approved a major rule designed by the staff to ease the burden on businesses.

Under the controversial and innovative new regulation--the first of its kind in the nation--Los Angeles area businesses can pay up instead of cleaning up.

An estimated 5,000 polluting businesses in the four-county Southland can opt to contribute to a special fund rather than meeting requirements to clean up their smog-forming emissions.

The AQMD will use the money to invest in projects that offer immediate reductions in pollution--such as buying and scrapping high-polluting cars or purchasing advanced technologies such as electric vehicles.

Over a year in the making, the Air Quality Investment Program was hailed Friday by Lents and other AQMD officials as a new smog-fighting approach that could be a catalyst for new technology. But it remains highly contentious because the AQMD board took the unprecedented step of approving a pollution program opposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has oversight over all local and state smog rules.

AQMD officials say they believe the months-long impasse with the EPA can be broken in time for the program to start up in January.