Air Resources Board terms revisited
Under plan, most current members of the powerful state panel would remain through 2020.
SACRAMENTO — California’s top climate regulator will continue serving through 2020 under a plan set to be voted on Thursday.
Mary Nichols, who has led the California Air Resources Board since 2007, would see her term expire at the end of 2020 if the board’s members confirm staff recommendations at the Thursday meeting. The Air Resources Board is one of the most powerful agencies in the state, and is responsible for implementing California’s strict greenhouse gas and air pollution rules.
Legislation passed in 2016 authorizes Air Resources Board members to serve six-year terms, part of an effort by lawmakers to wrest some control over the agency from the governor, who appoints a dozen of the board’s 14 members. The law, however, allowed initial terms in office to be staggered so that the board wouldn’t see constant turnover.
Under the new plan, the terms of three board members — the two legislative appointees and a retiring San Diego County supervisor — would wrap up at the end of 2018. The terms of Nichols and four others end in 2020, and the remaining six members — including a current vacant position — will expire in 2022.
The proposal has drawn questions from Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia (DCoachella), who wrote the 2016 law. He has asked why the plan does not evenly stagger the terms, and why many board members who have already served for many years would receive longer terms than others. For instance, Sandra Berg, who was appointed by thenGov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2004, would serve until 2022, while the term of Dean Florez, who was appointed by the state Senate in 2016, will end at the end of this year.
“It would be more logical and aligned with the intent of [the law] to have Board members who have served longer than six years end their terms earlier than Board members who have not yet reached their sixyear term,” Garcia wrote in a July 20 letter to Nichols.
Florez said he is also troubled by the proposal and plans to vote against it. Board members appointed by lawmakers are supposed to represent perspectives from low-income neighborhoods often disproportionately affected by pollution.
“Term limits means bringing new faces on to the Board, if I understood the Legislature’s mandate correctly,” Florez said. “It doesn’t mean first-on, firstout, but rather bringing in new necessary voices like the environmental justice movement to the table, and new perspectives in our ongoing battle against climate change and pollution.”
Though board members are set to vote on the proposal Thursday, the agency has not released the plan publicly on its website. An agency spokesman told The Times it wouldn’t be made available until the day of the vote. The Times obtained the proposal from Florez.
“The most powerful board in America on climate change is about to change its decision-makers for the next decade, and yet those membership changes are hidden from public review until the day of the vote?” Florez said. “It legitimately raises suspicion all the way around.”