Air Resources Board keeps Brown’s imprint
Powerful state agency grants 11 of 14 members longer terms, ensuring continuity into 2020.
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown will keep his imprint on California’s powerful climate change agency even after he leaves office at the end of this year.
The California Air Resources Board, the state’s climate change and air quality regulator, on Thursday granted 11 of its 14 members longer terms. The decision ensures that the next governor — either Democrat Gavin Newsom or Republican John Cox — won’t have inf luence over much of the board’s leadership during his first term in office unless current members leave their posts.
“I’m sure the next governor will be OK with a few of the folks here remaining on the board,” member Hector De La Torre, a former state legislator, said during the board’s debate on the change.
The Air Resources Board is responsible for helping set automobile emission targets and spending billions of dollars to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The new rules for board member terms comes after the passage of a 2016 law designed to increase legislative oversight over the agency, which is predominantly controlled by the executive branch. The governor appoints a dozen of the board members. Previously, the governor could replace those members at will and so could the Legislature for its two appointees.
The law calls for board members to serve fixed sixyear terms that must be confirmed by the state Senate, but gives the agency the ability to decide how the initial terms will be staggered to avoid constant turnover. Board members can be reappointed indefinitely to new six-year terms.
The plan approved Thursday has three members’ terms, including the two appointees from the Legislature, expiring at the end of this year. Five members, including Chairwoman Mary Nichols, have terms that expire in 2020. The remaining six positions will end in 2022.
Some lawmakers, board members and activists criticized the plan both for how it set up the new terms and the lack of transparency surrounding the move. The agency kept the proposal under wraps until Thursday morning, even though board members were notified of the plan on July 13.
Before the vote, Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia (DCoachella), who wrote the 2016 term-staggering law, questioned why the plan does not evenly space out the terms, and why many board members who have already served for many years received longer terms than others. For instance, Sandra Berg, who was appointed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2004, can now serve until 2022. But the term of Dean Florez, who was appointed by the state Senate in 2016, will expire 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.
Air Resources Board Chief Counsel Ellen Peter said during the hearing that the agency wanted to take into account that the next governor will have to make thousands of appointments when he enters office next year. The board’s new plan, she said, reduced that burden.
“We shifted the gubernatorial ones, for the most part, toward the end,” Peter said.
Advocates who represent low-income communities expressed concern that they weren’t able to know details of the plan until hours before the decision. They wanted more time to assess its effects. Climate change and air pollution issues disproportionately affect low-income neighborhoods, and activists have been increasing their monitoring of the board in recent years.
“It’s sad to see this decision can be made today without any public process,” said Grecia Elenes, a policy advocate at Leadership Counsel for Justice & Accountability, a nonprofit that advocates for residents of the San Joaquin and Eastern Coachella valleys.
Florez, a former state senator, asked other board members to postpone the vote so that it could be further vetted, but his effort was defeated. He was the lone vote against Thursday’s decision. Florez argued that the next governor should have a larger role in appointing new members.
“You’re tying the governor’s hands,” Florez said.