Former CARB Chairman, John Dunlap, sees this bill as a critical first step towards improving CARB’s enforcement program. “The California Senate and the regulated community fully agree that the largest penalties should be consistently imposed in a transparent manner on gross violations that harm air quality.  This bill will ensure that CARB’s enforcement resources are focused on its most important objective – protecting California’s air quality.”

If signed into law, the new rules will require CARB to be open and up front with the regulated community about how and why it imposes penalties. The bill will also require CARB to adopt a formal enforcement policy by March, 2011.

“This bill ensures an enforcement process that is publicly visible, easily understood and implemented in a clear and consistent manner – all fundamental tenets of an open, transparent, good government,” said Bill Guerry, counsel to Californians for Enforcement Reform and Transparency (CERT).  Kris Kiser, Executive Vice President of the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute, a CERT-member organization said “A unanimous 32-0 vote out of the California Senate sends a clear signal that the California legislature recognizes the common-sense merits of our argument for enforcement reforms at CARB.”  The bill will be considered by the California Assembly Natural Resources Committee in the coming weeks.

Californians for Enforcement-Reform and Transparency is a diverse group of industries and trade associations with the goal of working cooperatively with CARB to enhance CARB’ s compliance and enforcement programs.

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Environmental Partner William (Bill) Guerry and associate Eric Waeckerlin of the national law firm Kelley Drye & Warren LLP, have joined with John Dunlap of the Dunlap Group in Sacramento, California to form CERT. Together, the CERT team of lawyers and consultants have extraordinary expertise and experience in representing a wide array of manufacturing clients before EPA and CARB on enforcement matters as well as related government relations and regulatory activities. 

For more information on CERT and its positions go to www.certreform.org

The group, Californians for Enforcement-Reform and Transparency (CERT), will appear at the state air quality public workshop to call for the board to spell out a clear enforcement policy and disclose how it allocates the money collected in settlements.

As part of improving the credibility of CARB’s enforcement program, the group will call for the board to publish an annual or bi-annual report detailing precisely how it assesses penalties under the Air Pollution Control Funds and how it spends the money it collects – “consistent with proper oversight and authority.”

The state board’s discussion of enforcement policies grows out of comments by Chairwoman Mary Nichols of CARB in a July hearing in which she strongly supported “regularizing and formalizing (CARB’s) penalty structures and procedures.”

She noted, “If we are not enforcing our regulations in a way that is seen by the public to be effective and fair, we might as well not be passing all the regulation that this board works hard to adopt.”

John Dunlap, a former chairman of CARB, supports the CERT goals and has endorsed the new group’s aims for what he has described as a “needed reform process.”

The goals of Chairwoman Nichols dovetail with CERT’s aims, according to Dunlap.

“This needed reform process will help achieve our mutual goals of reducing air pollution,” said Dunlap, “effectively prioritizing enforcement resources, and promoting compliance and integrity – through the adoption and implementation of a consistent, fair, and transparent penalty process.”

CERT supports a crackdown aimed at the most serious and deliberate violations (typically imports from off-shore, new market-entrants). The group has pointed to the penalty structure used by the United States Environmental Protection Agency as a possible model for the state board. The EPA formula has been effective in focusing on cases where pollution violations are the worst.

The group advocates for a system that imposes the heaviest penalties on the most serious, prolific violations. Such pollution should be regarded as a more serious risk, for example, than administrative paperwork oversights that cause no harm to the environment. It is calling for a structure that is publicly visible, easily understood, and enforced in a clear and consistent manner of good government.

George Lawrence, a former top official with the U.S. EPA, also supports CERT’s goals and objectives. Lawrence, the former head of the EPA’s Mobile Source Enforcement Branch, said the agency’s penalty formula, which has focused on cases that are most significant, has “instilled an important perception of fairness.”

“EPA’s penalty matrix has proven highly effective in focusing enforcement on cases where the impacts on the environment and avoided compliance costs are most significant,” said Lawrence. “It has also provided clarity to all stakeholders, including environmental groups.”

A lawyer for CERT, William Guerry, a partner with Kelley Drye & Warren LLP in Washington, said environmental, government and business leaders share a common stake in policy reforms that crack down on the most egregious polluters. Guerry argues that “CARB must adopt a more transparent system in terms of how they collect and spend penalty funds.”

“There should be an evaluation of whether settlement funds should ultimately go to the state,” Guerry said, “rather than being retained by CARB – in order to achieve CARB’s core mission, which is protecting air quality and preserving its integrity and credibility.”

For more information on CERT and its positions, as well as a comprehensive supporting “Note” by George Lawrence on the effectiveness of the EPA penalty policy, go to http://www.kelleydrye.com/news/press/0199.

Logistical information (including the public web-cast) for the October 12th workshop at 1 p.m. (PAC time) at 1001 I Street, Sacramento, Calif., can be found at http://www.arb.ca.gov/enf/meetings.htm

Contact: Jerry Azevedo 916-554-3404