Intergovernmental Relations and Clean-Air Policy in Southern California

In 1989, California adopted a bold and comprehensive Air QualityManagement Plan (AQMP) to bring southern California into compliancewith federal air-quality standards by 2007. California's effortto control air pollution, as outlined in the AQMP, significantlyinfluenced the formulation of the 1990 federal Clean Air Act.This article analyzes the nature of this influence as well asthe way the new federal legislation bolsters specific provisionsof the AQMP. Also examined is whether the AQMP and the CleanAir Act are likely to bring southern California into compliancewith federal air-quality standards.     

Inequities in enforcement? Environmental justice and government performance

This paper examines whether state governments perform systematically less environmental enforcement of facilities in communities with higher minority and low‐income populations. Although this is an important claim made by environmental justice advocates, it has received little attention in the scholarly literature. Specifically, I analyze state regulatory enforcement of three U.S. pollution control laws—the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act—over the period 1985–2000. To test for disparities in enforcement, I estimate a series of count models and find strong evidence across each of the three environmental laws that states perform less enforcement in poor counties, but little evidence of race‐based inequities. © 2009 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Problems,politics, and policy streams in policy implementation

We apply Kingdon's multiple streams framework (MSF) to policy implementation to reflect a nested process separate from but interdependent with policymaking. Then, we generate a hypothesis concerning the conditional nature of problems, policies, and politics stream impacts on policy implementation. We test our hypotheses with state‐level implementation of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, using a pooled data set of 10 years of toxic releases data. Findings suggest an important interaction occurs among problems, policies, and politics during the policy implementation process. More specifically, when any of the three is held at median levels, only marginal differences in outputs occur; however, when all three are increased to extreme levels, substantive differences emerge. Conclusions connect policy implementation to larger issues of MSF theoretical development and suggest implications for governance.     

Defining Environmental Justice Communities for Regulatory Enforcement: Implications from a Block‐Group‐Level Analysis of New York State

The absence of a clear definition of environmental justice areas has been cited as one of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's major deficiencies in managing federal environmental justice programs. Several states have explicitly defined potential environmental justice areas and integrated targeted efforts into the policy‐making process. At the block‐group level, this study evaluates the effects of New York State's environmental justice policy, which defines communities of concern in terms of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics as well as mandates supplemental regulatory enforcement activities for these neighborhoods, on the agency's policy implementation practices under the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. The empirical findings suggest that there is inconclusive evidence regarding race/ethnicity‐ and class‐based environmental inequity. Also, the state's policy intervention is not universally effective. Moreover, task environments of a given community are a consistent determinant of the agency's regulatory compliance monitoring and assurance activities. This study then derives broader implications regarding the adoption of a policy instrument that defines and screens potential environmental justice communities.     

Chromium‐Based Regulations Applicable to Metal Finishing Industries in the United States: A Policy Assessment

This article seeks to briefly evaluate the context behind the development of regulations related to chromium pollution control in metal finishing industries. The available evidence suggests the possibility of elevation of the issue to the agenda for agency rule‐making, and subsequent implementation can occur even in the absence of focusing events. Based on historical evidence, this article illustrates that gradual accumulation of knowledge of harmful effects of chromium over the period of decades has been instrumental in the formulation and implementation of standards and guidelines to regulate chromium in the environment under major statutes such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and so on. The implementation of command and control regulations has resulted in appreciable reduction of chromium released into the environment, thereby minimizing the impact on human health and the environment. However, achieving full compliance from metal finishing industries is still an illusion. There are examples of violations committed by industries. In response to this realization, policy evolution in the chromium pollution control domain has occurred in two directions: (1) gradual replacement of existing standards with more stringent standards and guidelines and (2) emphasis on multimedia, voluntary, and participatory approaches to improve compliance. But the results from the latter are not as dramatic as previously envisioned. Borrowing from the experience of the Common Sense Initiative (CSI), this article argues that consensus‐based, multistakeholder collaboration can be a policy development tool.     

The politics and economics of auction design in the market for sulfur dioxide pollution

The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 aim to create a market in emissions of sulfur dioxide from power plants by distributing a fixed number of tradable pollution permits called “allowances,” and by providing for the auction of a small fraction of the total number of allowances. This article describes potential inefficiencies in this market and how an auction could enhance the market. It shows that the method by which allowances are “bundled together” for auction is an important efficiency-related element of auction design. The article also examines the politics of auction design and how equity goals strongly shaped the design ultimately adopted by Congress. Finally, some implications are suggested for the role of policy analysis in the legislative process.     

When Governments Regulate Governments

This article advances a political theory of regulation that accounts for the choices of regulators and regulated entities when both are governments. Leading theories of regulation assume that governments regulate profit‐maximizing firms: Governments set rules, to which firms respond rationally in ways that constrain their behavior. But often the entities that governments regulate are other governments. We argue that government agencies and private firms often face different compliance costs, and that agencies have greater incentives than firms to appeal regulations through political channels. Simultaneously, the typical enforcement instruments that regulators use to influence firm behavior may be less effective against governments. Our empirical subjects are public and private entities’ compliance with the U.S. Clean Air Act and Safe Drinking Water Act. We find that, compared with private firms, governments violate these laws significantly more frequently and are less likely to be penalized for violations.     

THE STATES AND DEREGULATION: THE CASE OF SURFACE MINING

The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA), passed to correct the abuses of surface mining, assigned key implementation roles to the states. While the federal government originally enforced SMCRA, states could operate the program themselves. Once states decided to run their own program the federal government would oversee them to insure they properly enforce the Act. This research examines the enforcement behavior of states in the 1980s. The results indicate that early in the Reagan administration eastern states enforced the SMCRA less stringently than other states. Eastern states increased their level of enforcement later in the 1980s in response to pressures for increased federal oversight from Congress, interest groups and others.     

Covenants with weak swords: ISO 14001 and facilities' environmental performance

Voluntary environmental programs are codes of progressive environmental conduct that firms pledge to adopt. This paper investigates whether ISO 14001, a voluntary program with a weak sword—a weak monitoring and sanctioning mechanism—can mitigate shirking and improve participants' environmental performance. Sponsored by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), ISO 14001 is the most widely adopted voluntary environmental program in the world. Our analysis of over 3,000 facilities regulated as major sources under the U.S. Clean Air Act suggests that ISO 14001‐certified facilities reduce their pollution emissions more than non‐certified facilities. This result persists even after controlling for facilities' emission and regulatory compliance histories as well as addressing potential endogeneity issues between facilities' environmental performance and their decisions to join ISO 14001. © 2005 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

POLLUTION CONTROL ALTERNATIVES

Elizabeth H. Haskell . The Politics of Clean Air
Robert W. Crandall . Controlling Industrial Pollution
Eric Ashby and Mary Anderson . The Politics of Clean Air     

Pollution control innovations and the Clean Air Act of 1990

One advantage often cited for market‐based environmental policies is that they are more likely to promote technological innovation than are command and control regulations. This paper uses patent data to study innovation in flue gas desulfurization units (“scrubbers”) across these policy regimes. Plant level data indicate that the effect of these patents on pollution control changed after passage of the 1990 Clean Air Act, which instituted a market for sulfur dioxide (SO₂) permits. Previous regulations requiring plants constructed before 1990 to install scrubbers created incentives for innovation that lowered the costs of operating scrubbers, but did little to improve the environmental effectiveness of the technology. In comparison, innovations occurring since 1990 do serve to improve the removal efficiency of scrubbers. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Ideas and action: A cognitive model of the Senate Agriculture Committee

But while the research is being done, what provisions should be incorporated in the Clean Air Act of 1977 (or the Acts of 1978 through 2000, for that matter)? For research won't give us clear answers then either. What constitutes procedural rationality in such circumstances? “Reasonable men” reach “reasonable” conclusions in circumstances where they have no prospect of applying classical models of substantive rationality. We know only imperfectly how they do it. We know even less whether the procedures they use in place of the inapplicable models have any merit—although most of us would choose them in preference to drawing lots. The study of procedural rationality in circumstances where attention is scarce, where problems are immensely complex, and where crucial information is absent presents a host of challenging and fundamental research problems to anyone who is interested in the rational allocation of scarce resources.     

Upset over Air Pollution: Analyzing Upset Event Emissions at Petroleum Refineries

The Clean Air Act (CAA) controls routine emissions at petroleum refineries, by creating limits and penalties for excess emissions. The CAA offers provisions for upset events, air emissions released because of unforeseen or unavoidable circumstances, if companies report the emissions and take corrective action. States enforce upset event rules and many states provide exemptions for a variety of circumstances, which may allow upset emissions to become a substantial, yet mostly unregulated source of emissions. We catalog the quantity and type of emissions generated during upset events at 18 Texas petroleum refineries from 2003 to 2008. We find that upset events occur frequently at these facilities and are collectively large in magnitude, emitting a combined total of 75 million lbs of emissions. In a select number of cases, single upset events exceeded annual emissions reported to the Toxics Release Inventory. Future research should assess the accuracy of upset event reporting and impact of upset events on environmental health.     

Equity,efficiency and environmental quality

Many government policies ostensibly designed to serve allocative ends appear to be driven primarily if not exclusively by redistributive considerations. This paper analyzes one such policy, the New Source Performance Standards of the Clean Air Act of 1977, using data derived principally from studies commissioned by and known to those involved in the policy making process. These data are used to produce estimates of the magnitude and relative efficiency of the wealth transfers effected by the policy. Among our conclusions are that, at least with respect to this particular episode, (a) environmental regulation is an extremely inefficient method of transferring wealth and (b) transfers between groups within regions of the U.S. are large relative to transfers between those regions.     

STATE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE SURFACE MINING CONTROL AND RECLAMATION ACT OF 1977

The implementation of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) of 1977 in coal producing states is guided by a partial preemption policy approach t h a t establishes a balance between federal and state decision-making authority. The usefulness of this approach is assessed by analyzing state enforcement actions in relation the institutional capacity of states to shoulder regulatory responsibilities and the propensity of the federal Office of Surface Mining (OSM) t o oversee state enforcement actions and, if necessary, to undertake corrective action. Our results indicated that state administration of SMCRA was canstrained by the lack of effective federal oversight but was largely unaffected by interstate differences in political, economic, or administrative characteristics.     

Before There Was Enron,There Was Orange County: A Study of Local Government Financial‐Oversight Committees

Recent financial scandals in some of America's largest corporations have prompted popular speculation that a similar crisis may occur within the public sector and, therefore, that government and nonprofit organizations should be required to adopt financial oversight practices similar to those that are mandated of publicly‐traded corporations in the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act of 2002. One of those mandated practices—the use of financial‐oversight committees—is already a common practice in public organizations, though little is known about its effectiveness. This study uses a national sample of local governments to examine whether financial‐oversight committees improve financial control and strengthen stakeholder confidence in financial reporting. The findings provide preliminary support for the use of financial‐oversight committees as an effective tool to improve financial accountability in local government.     

THE NEED FOR FEDERAL OVERSIGHT OF ALTERNATIVE BOND SYSTEMS UNDER SMCRA

The 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) requires mine operators to post reclamation bonds before mining begins. The Federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) has approved alternative bond systems in seven states. These systems, rather than requiring bond amounts at the full cost of reclamation, require operators t o submit only a flat rate, acreage specific bond. Additional reclamation costs should be covered by a supplemental fund composed generally of permit fees, taxes, or penalties.
In many cases, alternative bond systems fail to ensure that funds will be available to reclaim coal mined land in the event of operator default, as required by SMCRA. OSMRE needs to take a more active role in oversight of existing state alternative bond systems to ensure that reclamation occurs.     

A critical overview of the evolutionary approach to air pollution abatement policy

Emerging flaws in existing air quality policies and changing air quality objectives are being addressed with piecemeal modifications. The evolving policy combines a command and control (CaC) core with add-on opportunities to trade pollution control responsibilities based on economic incentives. While the add-ons have greatly improved air quality policies, retention of the CaC core means that we are still paying far too much for air quality that is still unacceptable. Specific reasons why a CaC core limits emissions trading and reduces economic efficiency are discussed. They include: (1) the arbitrary and irrelevant nature of CaC-based assignment of pollution control responsibility to firms; (2) trading limits for emissions offsets in ‘non-attainment areas’; (3) all-ornothing deadlines that have been extended three times; (4) sunk costs as a barrier to innovation; (5) the illusion that a CaC-based policy has lower inventory and monitoring costs. The conclusion is that there will be a big difference between the performance of the existing policy, even with some additional modifications, and the kind of market incentives-based policies advocated by economists. Economists' proposals are now before Congress in congressionally sponsored studies. Reauthorization of the Clean Air Act, in some form, is expected this congressional session.     

Choosing among fuels and technologies for cleaning up the air

One of the central elements in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments is the regulation of emissions from motor vehicles. This legislation will have a dramatic impact on the type of cars people drive over the coming decades. Given the high cost of achieving further reductions from automobiles, there has been increasing interest in exploring new technologies and alternative fuels that improve environmental quality. The purpose of this study is to provide an integrated framework for assessing the cost effectiveness of control options that involve a combination of vehicle changes and fuel changes. This study demonstrates the importance of doing an integrated analysis in selecting an appropriate combination of technologies and fuels; it also highlights the need to consider decentralized regulatory approaches, such as effluent taxes and marketable permits, when the data are characterized by large uncertainties. The analysis suggests that a modest improvement in vehicle control technology is probably a cost effective strategy for reducing ozone; however, using a severely reformulated gasoline or an advanced technology, such as the electric vehicle, is unlikely to be cost effective compared with other available options for improving air quality. The cost savings from introducing a market-based approach in place of a vehicle mandate in California and the Northeast are estimated to range from $7 to $29 billion.     

Driving less for better air: Impacts of a public information campaign

In the wake of the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, localities across the United States initiated public information campaigns both to raise awareness of threats to air quality and to change behavior related to air pollution by recommending specific behavioral changes in the campaign messages. These campaigns are designed to reduce the health hazards associated with poor air quality and to avoid federal sanctions resulting from the failure to meet air quality standards. As in many other communities across the country, a coalition of government agencies and businesses initiated a public information campaign in the Atlanta metropolitan region to reduce certain targeted behaviors, mainly driving. A two‐stage model used to analyze data from a rolling sample survey shows that the centerpiece of the information campaign—air quality alerts—was effective in raising awareness and reducing driving in a segment of the population. When the overall information campaign was moderated by employers' participation in programs to improve air quality, drivers significantly reduced the number of miles they drove and the number of trips they took by car on days when air quality alerts were sounded. Public information campaigns can be successful in increasing awareness, but changing well‐established behaviors, such as driving, is likely to require institutional mediation to provide social contexts that support the behavioral change, as well. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.