Posted on 05/31/2007 9:22:32 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
As deadlines loom in California's landmark law to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, the Senate hopes to write into the state budget a rule that forces Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Market Advisory Committee to eschew closed-door meetings and allow the public to view its deliberations. The committee is charged with proposing the heart of the carbon-emissions law--the system of rewards and penalties that will actually make the statute work.
The confidential nature of the committee is well known in the Capitol but has been largely ignored outside the state, where the focus has been as much on Schwarzenegger, an actor-turned-politician with a huge fan base, as on the new law. Experts note that the committee's role is to make recommendations only, and that the final decision will be made publicly by the Air Resources Board.
But the deliberations leading up the Market Advisory Committee's recommendations have largely been private--and that rankles Senate Democrats.
"Any discussion that is being sponsored by the state should be open and accessible. It's not very complicated, really. There are no trade secrets there," said Senate Leader Don Perata, an Oakland Democrat. The problem, he added, is that the law is being shaped outside the public view.
Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, also questioned the secrecy. "When in doubt, err on the side of open government," he said.
The recommendations by the Market Advisory Committee (MAC) are expected by the end of the week. The committee is scheduled to convene June 12 to take public testimony its findings. The final report--presumably reflecting that testimony--is due to be sent to the ARB by the end of June.
But even if the Senate's open-meeting language were approved, it would have little impact on the MAC, which closes its doors before July 1, when the new budget takes effect. It could, however, affect future advisory committees. Three laws govern public access to government information: the Brown Act, for local governments; the Legislative Public Records Act, for the Legislature; and the Bagley-Keene Act, which deals with state agencies and their advisory committees.
The question, however, is whether Bagley-Keene applies to advisory panels created by executive orders. Like the other two laws governing public access, there have been few successful prosecutions for violations.
The dispute over open meetings and their connection to the greenhouse-gas emissions has simmered since last year when the law--which fights global warming by cutting carbon emissions to below 1990 levels over the next 13 years--was passed by the Legislature and signed by Schwarzenegger.
The law, AB 32 co-authored by former Assemblywoman Fran Pavley and Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, was crafted following months of negotiations.
Among other things, the law set up two advisory committees--one on environmental justice and the other on environmental technology. Those two committees' meetings have been open to the public; the latest were scheduled this week. The committees' members include Alan Lloyd, former chairman of the ARB and the former state EPA secretary.
But the MAC, by far the most powerful panel, was not a part of AB 32 and its deliberations have not been as publicly accessible as the other two committees. It was created by the executive order that the governor signed shortly after he signed the main bill. The executive order gave MAC authority to create the economic underpinning of the global emissions--a critical piece of the new law. Some environmentalists felt betrayed by the governor's order, noting that negotiations over AB 32 specifically ruled out such a body, leaving that function instead to the ARB, which, in any event, has final say-so over MAC's recommendations.
"It's been called the 'Illegal Advisory Committee,'" one Capitol expert noted. The committee's deliberations are private, although the panel has appeared in public--briefly--to take testimony. The Natural Resources Defense Council, among others, urged that the meetings be open to the public.
There is little mystery surrounding MAC's broad recommendation, however.
The committee, as it has publicly stated, intends to recommend some form of "cap and trade," in which "clean" companies that meet or exceed their emission targets can sell, trade, auction or give credits to other polluting companies, thus allowing the latter to continue to operate. Such trading in "emission credits" or "pollution credits" already exists in Southern California and other areas where participation is voluntary.
In general, cap and trade is favored by manufacturing interests and others whose operations would be directly affected by the new law. They argue that such a system gives greater control to companies, is less intrusive into the marketplace than top-down regulations and creates financial incentives for emitters to get "clean." In providing business-related data to the state, they add, companies have the right to be protected from disclosure of sensitive or competitive information.
There are other market structures, however--as environmentalists are quick to point out. Those include a basic fee on polluters, or give tax breaks or other incentives to companies that devise new clean technology. There are varieties of "offsets" in which polluters in one area and soften potential penalties by investing in "clean" strategies elsewhere.
"Do you allow for offsets and, if so, what kind and where?" said the Sierra Club's Bill Magavern. "We would oppose a California polluter being able to get credit for offsetting its emissions by spending money in another country. How would this keep the promise of AB 32, which was to develop new technology for California? The best way for California to have a global impact is to set strong standards."
Perata is not impressed with either cap and trade or offsets. "Cap and trade sounds like something that Wall Street cares about, and few other people do," he said. As for offsets, he questioned allowing a company to emit excessive greenhouse gases in California because it is also "helping a tree breathe in Indonesia."
"I've never even seen Indonesia and I don't think that [offset] works," he added.
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