----- Original Message -----
From: "Senator Florez" <Senator.Florez@SEN.CA.GOV>
To: "Florez, Dean" <Dean.Florez@SEN.CA.GOV>
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2003 7:19 AM
Subject: SB708
> Thank you for contacting my office and sharing your thoughts on SB708. In
> January of this year, I was appointed Chairman of the Senate Select
> Committee on Air Quality in the Central Valley. To date, the committee
has
> conducted four hearings and nine more are scheduled to be held this year.
> After all the hearings, a report to the legislature will be submitted
> detailing the committee's findings from the hearings.
>
> Why have I undertaken this initiative to clean up our air? Air pollutants
> in the San Joaquin Valley have gone up 17 percent in the last three years
> alone. According to the Los Angeles Times, air pollution is to blame for
> more deaths in the San Joaquin Valley in the last three years than car
> accidents and murders combined. The San Joaquin Valley has surpassed Los
> Angeles as the worst air basin in the state and the second worst in the
> country. The asthma rate for children in Fresno County is the highest in
> California - twice that of Los Angeles and triple the national average.
> Without swift and decisive intervention, this problem promises to escalate
> into a public health crisis, if it isn't already.
>
> In response to this, I have introduced ten bills targeted at cleaning the
> air in the San Joaquin Valley. SB708 is one of those bills.
Unfortunately,
> what much of the public does not understand is that SB708 is a work in
> progress, and amendments have been written since the original version was
> first circulated. Our bill has two important objectives. First and
> foremost, I want to get the worst gross polluters off the road, to
mitigate
> ozone emissions into the air. Second, I am working hard to preserve and
> protect the rights of car owners who keep well-maintained older vehicles,
> many of them classic cars, as enacted in SB 42.
>
> SB708, with our most recent amendments, will require vehicles over 30
years
> old which are driven 12,000 or more miles a year to get a smog check.
Cars
> which are not used as a primary vehicle, driven on a dailty basis, should
> not fall under this definition. The collector car industry
representatives
> we have worked with so far agree that this is a fair compromise which
> protects collectors and hobbyists, while cutting down on auto emissions.
>
> My staff and I have worked diligently on this issue. We have conducted
more
> than 30 hours of meetings on the subject, returned hundreds of phone calls
> and collaborated with prominent people within the classic car industry -
> even Jay Leno himself. Steve Davis, one of the leaders of the initiative
> that became SB42, has worked closely with our office to craft SB708 in a
way
> that protects the classic car hobbyist and targets only gross polluters.
We
> are confident that the amended SB708 will prevent gross polluters from
> taking advantage of SB42 and undermining the purpose of the 30-year
rolling
> exemption.
>
> I thank you for your input and your willingness to participate in our
> effotrs to clean the San Joaquin Valley air basin.
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