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Support for clean cars legislation rolls across state

Primary opposition for the bill, co-sponsored by Frosh, comes from auto dealers

Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2006

Environmentalists are revving their engines to lobby state lawmakers to adopt clean car legislation in the next General Assembly session.

The Chesapeake Climate Action Network has held town hall meetings across the state from Baltimore to Chevy Chase in recent weeks to drum up support for the Clean Cars Act, a bill to set higher pollution standards and force car dealers to sell more low-emission vehicles.

‘‘The bill is a proactive way of dealing with air pollution from automobiles,” Chesapeake Climate Action Network Organizing Director Joshua Tulkin said. ‘‘This does to cars what the healthy air act did to power plants.”

Sen. Brian E. Frosh (D-Dist.16) of Chevy Chase is sponsoring the bill, with Del. Elizabeth Bobo (D-Dist. 12B) of Columbia sponsoring the House of Delegates version. The bill fell one vote short of making it out of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee in 2005.

The primary opposition for the bill, Tulkin said, comes from auto dealers that would feel the brunt of the regulations. The bill mandates that 5 percent of new cars sold must have low emission technology.

‘‘So the incentive there is that companies need to figure out how to market those and sell those cars effectively,” Tulkin said. ‘‘That includes hybrids and some natural gas vehicles. So rather than mandating how they hit that target they’re going to let business do what business does best.”

The bill also requires that all new vehicles manufactured meet a higher level of pollution and for the first time regulates carbon dioxide emissions as a pollutant. The proposed regulations are based on the California Low Emission Vehicle (LEV) Standard, which 10 other states have adopted, including Oregon, Washington, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

‘‘Some of the car dealerships on the Pennsylvania border might actually choose to support this because that would put them more in sync with the [Pennsylvania] car buyers ... who are going to have to buy cars that meet the Pennsylvania standard.”