Air Pollution Policy Shaped by Select Few : Environment: Eight individuals are seen as wielding the most influence in the battle over local regulations.

Smog. Everyone talks about it.

But when it comes to executing a battle plan to clean Southern California’s air, only a handful of people are highly influential.

These few have a major voice in shaping air pollution policy, whether it’s a decision to impose charges on commuters who drive alone or to plan for air quality regulation into the 21st Century.

James M. Lents, executive officer of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, is foremost among them. State Air Resources Board Chairwoman Jananne Sharpless, AQMD Deputy Executive Officer Pat Nemeth and Los Angeles attorney Robert A. Wyman are others. Gladys Meade, director of environmental health with the American Lung Assn. of California, Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce President Ray Remy, and two members of the AQMD governing board complete the list.

Oddly, no environmentalist stands out since Mark Abramowitz stepped down as a leader of the nonprofit Coalition for Clean Air last year to join the AQMD’s appeals board.

To be sure, hundreds are involved in the fight to bring Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties into compliance with federal clean air standards by the year 2010.

For example, Assemblyman Byron Sher (D-Palo Alto) and state Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside) have had a major impact. Sher authored the California Clean Air Act, which requires the AQMD to meet annual air pollution reduction targets. Presley carried a bill dramatically expanding the district’s authority.

But based on interviews with government officials, lobbyists, business executives and environmentalists, these eight stand out:

Soft-spoken Tennessean James M. Lents helped revitalize the once-moribund AQMD and shape its 20-year blueprint for clean air in the basin. Members of Congress and the White House frequently consulted him last year as they hammered out amendments to the federal Clean Air Act.

Lents, 47, assumed the AQMD helm in 1987 after a stint as director of Colorado’s air pollution division. When he was considered for the $125,000-a-year job, many viewed him as a longshot. While no one doubted his technical competence (Lents has two degrees in physics), there were questions about his political acumen and charisma.

But Lents quickly reorganized the staff, rebuilt the agency’s regulatory muscle and established the AQMD as a national leader in air pollution control.

“If we are not the leaders in improving air quality,” he asked at the time, “who is?”

In leading the battle for clean air, Lents is a realist.

During a public dispute between the AQMD and Southern California Edison Co. over costly new emission limits, Lents reached a compromise in behind-the-scenes negotiations that gave Edison more time to comply--and persuaded the powerful utility to drop its opposition to the overall clean air plan.

Within the AQMD bureaucracy, he is a consensus builder who brings together staffers with differing outlooks to craft programs. Once a decision is made, Lents expects a united front. “He evaluates us on our ability to work together, not our ability to stand separately,” said Deputy Executive Officer Nemeth.

Appointed to the state Air Resources Board in 1985 by then-Gov. George Deukmejian and reappointed this year by Gov. Pete Wilson, Jananne Sharpless, 46, presided over ARB approval last year of the world’s toughest tailpipe standards. The ARB also imposed unprecedented controls on smog-forming chemicals in consumer products from hair sprays to household cleaners.

ARB actions are critical to the smoggy South Coast Air Basin, accounting for half of all emission reductions envisioned in the next two decades.

Sharpless, who holds a political science degree from UC Davis, is known for her quick grasp of the political and technical complexities of a proposed rule. A voracious reader, she frequently surprises the ARB staff by commenting in detail on an obscure sentence in the middle of an exhaustive report.

Sharpless, who earns $106,404 annually in the full-time position, brings an extensive background in politics to her ARB post. She was administrative assistant to the late Republican Assemblyman John G. Veneman of Modesto from 1967 to 1969 and a staff consultant for various Assembly committees until 1983, including a stint as a toxic- and hazardous-waste analyst with the Ways and Means Committee.

ARB members are appointed by the governor and Sharpless’ success in winning board approval of the tailpipe standards and the AQMD’s clean air plan was owed in large part to the credibility she enjoyed with Deukmejian. Typically, she would anticipate questions and bring issues to his attention before others raised them.

Although Deukmejian mainly left air pollution policy up to Sharpless and the ARB, he did intervene at times.

Business executives argued that the AQMD clean air plan failed to take smog control costs into account. Cities and counties worried about losing control over land-use decisions. Deukmejian told Sharpless to look into the complaints. She held up approval two months, but the plan was approved virtually intact after consultations between the AQMD and its critics.

As the AQMD officer responsible for developing new smog control rules, Pat Nemeth is at the center of power.

“I don’t see anything (meaningful) that goes through the district staff that she doesn’t touch. I see people deferring to her,” said Douglas Henderson, executive director of the Western States Petroleum Assn.

Without doubt, Nemeth is among the AQMD’s most articulate staffers. At board meetings, the $97,414-a-year executive often enjoys more prominence than Lents, in part because the board’s biggest decisions involve smog control rules.

Business interests consider Nemeth, 45, a formidable adversary. Attorney Robert A. Wyman, who represents businesses regulated by the AQMD, said the force of one Nemeth presentation to the board killed a smog control plan advanced by business in favor of her own.

“She put on a presentation the likes of which I have never seen,” Wyman said.

But Nemeth’s staff has been criticized by the ARB and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for writing smog control rules that may be too ambiguous to be enforceable.

Although Nemeth says efforts are under way to correct the problem and to expand public participation before new rules are adopted, complaints persist.

“She operates in a very different style. . . . It’s harder to have input into what goes on in that part of the district’s operation (rule development),” said Mary Nichols, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental organization.

Nemeth holds a bachelor of architecture degree from UC Berkeley. Before joining the AQMD in 1988, she spent 15 years as an urban planner, including posts with the Southern California Assn. of Governments, Riverside and San Bernardino counties and the city of Carson. At SCAG, Nemeth was responsible for drafting portions of the clean air plan adopted by the AQMD.

Robert A. Wyman, an attorney with the leading legal firm of Latham & Watkins, represents a veritable who’s who of major industries.

A youngish-looking 36, Wyman went to court and challenged controversial new emission limits on paints and varnishes. He also contested an environmentalist’s lawsuit to force the federal government to impose stricter air pollution controls on the basin.

His most far-reaching impact, however, still may be ahead. Wyman is a key figure among the powerful interests pushing for a radical shift in how polluters are regulated.

Until now, the district has set limits on pollution emissions and told industries how to meet them. Wyman believes in market incentives that allow polluters to find the most innovative and economical ways to reduce emissions--an idea that is gaining momentum.

While Wyman clearly represents business interests, he is respected by environmentalists.

“Frankly, if you’re on the opposite side of him you’ve got big problems,” said Abramowitz, the environmentalist who filed the suit against the EPA.

Gladys Meade, the environmental health director of the American Lung Assn. of California, is the veteran among smog fighters.

An air quality advocate since 1974, Meade is the only individual from a nonprofit advocacy group who has made clean air a long-term and continuing cause--surpassing the efforts of environmentalists.

“It’s a question of persistence,” Meade said. “Others have gone on to other interests. Perhaps they felt discouraged.”

She was active in negotiations that led to the formation of the AQMD in 1974 and, more recently, was influential in backing the state’s Smog Check vehicle inspection and maintenance program and the California Clean Air Act.

Meade, 59, was an ARB member in 1972 and 1973, winning an appointment from then-Gov. Ronald Reagan. It was an appointment he may have regretted; she refused to back down under gubernatorial pressure to reverse a controversial decision requiring cars to be fitted with nitrogen oxide controls.

Meade is well informed on air pollution law and health issues and her views are valued by both the AQMD and business interests--both of which have been the target of both her criticism and cooperation.

Unlike others who wield influence outside government, Meade’s impact is grounded not in her ability to turn out voters or raise campaign funds but in her tenure as a clean air advocate and her grasp of the issues.

“I’m not a contributor to campaign coffers. I don’t have a large following. But I think the coalition of environmental groups, the lung association or . . . the League of Women Voters does have the force of moral suasion,” she said.

As president of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce since 1984, Ray Remy, 53, is frequently the point man in challenging the AQMD.

While a number of business executives have fought the AQMD on behalf of narrow interests, Remy takes on issues that affect a wide range of industries. He helped win passage, for instance, of a state law requiring the AQMD to take the overall socioeconomic costs of all its regulations into account.

“There was no wild enthusiasm on their (the AQMD’s) part to do these things,” said Remy. “They were dragged into it kicking and screaming.”

Remy’s ties with the heavy hitters in big business and his background in government service allow him to pick up the phone and talk to a corporate executive or the governor.

For eight years beginning in 1976, he was deputy mayor to Tom Bradley. Currently Remy is on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission and is a trustee of Claremont-McKenna College. He also is a past executive director of SCAG.

Remy has been critical of the double-digit growth of the district’s budget and led others in convincing the Legislature to increase its oversight.

No matter how powerful the pressure groups or how innovative the district staff, it is the 12-member AQMD governing board that adopts and oversees the clean air plan.

The governor, the Speaker of the Assembly and the state Senate Rules Committee each appoints one board member. The other nine are chosen by elected city and county officials in the four-county basin. Board members, who work part time and serve four-year terms, are paid $100 per meeting.

Each board member makes a contribution. Still, in the arena of politics and influence, two stand out: USC political science professor Larry L. Berg and Yorba Linda City Councilman Henry Wedaa.

Typically, Wedaa--a Republican--stakes out the middle ground. Berg, an appointee of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, is a liberal Democrat.

Wedaa is not as vocal as, say, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who routinely sides with business, or Sabrina Schiller, who arguably is the board’s most zealous clean air advocate. But big business lobbyists and environmental activists alike know that to win on an issue they must persuade moderates such as Wedaa. Many see Wedaa as the board’s bellwether--as he votes, so goes the board.

One glaring exception was Wedaa’s 1989 vote against the clean air plan. He personally favored the plan (which won overwhelmingly), but voted against it in keeping with the position of the Orange County cities he represents.

A semi-retired physicist, Wedaa, 67, owns a firm specializing in environmental consulting for airports and is a past president of SCAG.

Berg, 51, is a curious blend of Utopian and pragmatist. For instance, he was among the first to call for cleaner-burning alternative fuels as a futurist strategy for reducing air pollution from cars.

California Energy Commission chairman Charles Imbrecht calls Berg “to some extent the conscience of the board.”

But beneath his professorial tweed, Berg is a practitioner of networking, name-dropping and brokering. It was Berg the liberal who first raised objections about Lents’ compromise with Edison (“Lents went to the poker table with Edison and lost his shirt”) only to embrace it later as a necessary concession.

Research for this series was done by Times Editorial Researcher Michael Meyers.

AIR QUALITY REPORT CARD

Following is how key government officials, environmentalists and business executives graded the operations of the South Coast Air Quality Management District in five selected areas: AREAS OF EVALUATION

1-- On schedule in approving new air pollution rules.

2-- Public relations.

3-- Political support.

4-- Leadership, innovation in approach.

5-- Realistic, practical in approaches to reducing air pollution.

THE GRADES

* The numbers 1 to 5 appearing on the first line of this chart represent the individual areas of evaluation listed above.

1 2 3 4 5 Gladys Meade, American B B B A B Lung Assn. of Calif. Douglas Henderson, exec. dir., B C B B+ B Western States Petroleum Assn. James M. Lents, B+ C+ B- B+ B exec. officer, AQMD Mary Nichols, counsel, Natural B- B+ C A- C Resources Defense Council William Campbell, pres., C C C A D Calif. Manufacturers Assn. Larry L. Berg, AQMD board B- B+ B A B+ (appt. of Assembly Speaker) John Albright, AQMD board A B- C A B- (appt. of former Gov. Deukmejian) Charles Imbrecht, chairman, B B B A C+ California Energy Comm. Tom Flavin, mayor of Burbank C D C- D F State Sen. Robert Presley, B B C B+ B author of bill giving AQMD new powers John C. Wise, EPA deputy B A A A+ B regional administrator James Boyd, exec. officer, B A B B C Air Resources Board