"Technology, in the end, is going to save the day," the governor said at a news conference in London on Tuesday. "The faster we can improve technology with the green cars, green engines and so on, the better it is."
A few weeks earlier, however, top administration officials were encouraging the Air Resources Board to step on the brakes and consider industry pleas to push back the cleanup deadlines.
Small-business concerns
Gregg Albright, deputy director of the state Department of Transportation, said at a May hearing that the administration is "very concerned about the impacts on small business." He also expressed concern that the draft rules would drive up the cost of building roads and other infrastructure.
"When the industry says to us that this has an effect, even a modest effect, on cost ... we listen," Albright said.
The construction industry has developed close ties with Schwarzenegger. It worked with him to pass the $37-billion public works bonds that he championed, taking a lead role in the campaign to pass the measures and contributing more than $6 million to the effort.
Construction companies and related industries also directly contributed at least $1.3 million to the governor's reelection campaign and kicked in tens of thousands of dollars after the election to help pay for the governor's inauguration celebrations.
Environmentalists were dismayed to see the air board put off its vote from late May until mid-July so the effect on industry could be examined more fully. And they were chagrined that the administration, through Albright, offered to spend the weeks leading up to the vote working to give industry more of a voice in the regulations.
The state officials who drafted the regulations noted at the hearing that they had been taking input from the construction industry for more than two years and carefully considered it in the rules they wrote.
"These emission reductions are absolutely needed to address public health," said Catherine Witherspoon, the air board's executive officer. "Doing less or waiting longer will mean more people will breathe unhealthy air, suffer adverse health effects and will also delay attainment of the federal air standards."
According to internal memos obtained by The Times, the administration sought in early June to have Witherspoon removed from her job, but the board declined to fire her. Within weeks, board Chairman Robert Sawyer -- already at odds with the administration over how aggressively to combat global warming -- was fired. Witherspoon resigned Monday.
