Smack down at the air board? I can only hope

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
Dec. 5, 2009

If you happen to be in Sacramento on Wednesday, you might want to drop by the California Air Resources Board meeting to watch the fireworks.

Ok, ok, ok, it’s a government meeting, so fireworks might be a stretch.

Two board members have now stated publicly that they want the board to suspend the new diesel regulations that were to go into effect over the next few years requiring heavy trucks to retrofit with prohibitively expensive filtration devices to reduce PM2.5 emissions.

PM2.5 is tiny bits of soot in diesel emissions that CARB has deemed deadly per a report by CARB researcher Hien Tran that was used to justify the new regs.

Therein lies (part of) the problem.

Tran lied about having a PhD.

The other part of the problem, I say, is the crappy way Tran put the report together, discounting opposing studies that found no link between premature deaths and PM2.5 (especially in California) and averaging results of other studies and applying them across the state — among other slap dashery.

His lie was discovered by a number of CARB muckety-mucks, as well as the Chair of the Board, Mary Nichols, and at least one other board member, John Balmes, prior to the December 2008 vote on the regulations.

But that information was kept from the full board.

It wasn’t until September that board members got an earful from citizens about the Tran report.

That riled board member John Telles, a Fresno cardiologist, who threw down the gauntlet last month saying while the science in the report is solid (I disagree), CARB’s credibility is now in question.

He wants to suspend the rule and redo the report.

Now board member Ron Roberts has joined Telles, writing in the San Diego Union Tribune on Friday that the retrofit requirements will cost California trucking businesses $4.5 billion between 2010 and 2030.

“Imposing such expensive and groundbreaking regulation requires securing the full faith and confidence of the public. Unfortunately, actions by air board members and staff have shaken that trust.”

Balmes and Nichols have already said they think the rule should stand.

They’ve both said Tran’s report was incidental to their votes, that they “knew” the science supported the regulations.

Well, heck, if the science is so infallible, redoing the report should produce the same result, right?

Unless, of course, a redo would include an honest look at all the science, including those that find no link to PM2.5 and premature deaths.

And perhaps, not including studies in which the authors have refused to open their raw data to independent examination — which, by the way, would eliminate the main studies Tran used in his report.

Back to the boardroom showdown.

So far, it’s two against two.

There are 11 members total. So all Telles and Roberts need are four more level heads who care about good science and good government.

Given what we’ve seen so far from CARB, that seems like a big number.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

CONTACT THE BOARD!!!
Should they suspend the truck rule and redo the PM2.5 report?
Tell them at:
arbboard@arb.ca.gov

Or contact the board’s ombudsman at:
ombudsman@arb.ca.gov or (916) 323-6791
You can learn more about the ombudsman, which bypasses CARB senior staff and has direct access to board members at:
http://www.arb.ca.gov/ba/om...

You can also go to CARB’s site and comment directly to the “records” of the Board meeting here:
http://www.arb.ca.gov/lispu...

The meeting begins at 9 a.m. Wednesday
You can view it online here:
http://www.cal-span.org/

Arrogance pollutes air board

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
Dec. 2, 2009

As much as the California Air Resources Board would like to ignore this pesky little issue of a researcher lying about his credentials and using questionable methodology to pop out a report so the board could justify its draconian new diesel restrictions, I’m not lettin’ it go.

Particularly after looking at documents one board member gathered to find out just how many CARB board members knew about the fraud prior to voting on the rule, which could cripple California’s trucking industry.

The arrogance is breathtaking.

“Basically, I was guilty of thinking that since I ‘knew’ the underlying truth of the information we should not allow this stupid personnel problem to derail a critical rulemaking,” wrote CARB Chair Mary Nichols in an email to board member John Telles about what she knew of the researcher’s deception and when.

Errrk! Stop right there.

Since Nichols “knows” the truth of how pollutants affect health (the crux of the report by researcher Hien Tran), why’d we need a report at all? For that matter, why does CARB even need a research division? Or, following her logic on down the rabbit hole, why even have a voting board? Just crown Nichols “air queen” and be done with it.

But her email goes on.

“While the relentless criticism has been a distraction, frankly I think it is manageable.”

She calls Tran’s indiscretion “a very annoying distraction” even as she admits his actions were “both illegal and unethical.”

Still she defends his report as solid and says, “At the time, I thought that Tran’s voluntary demotion and removal from the project would be sufficient to insulate the rest of the ARB until we could proceed to disciplinary action and obtain a new review of the mortality report.”

Oh, my. I suppose she’s never heard the old saying about how when you’re in a hole the first thing you should do is STOP DIGGING.

It’s not just Nichols, though. Arrogance permeates CARB’s ranks.

In a series of emails Telles gathered about the investigation into Tran’s credentials, there’s this gem from Bart Croes, CARB’s Research Division Chief — and Tran’s boss:

“Hi Hien — Sorry that you have to go through this, and it shouldn’t matter to Enstrom whether or not you have a PhD, but I’d like to respond to John Balmes.”

Yeah, cause a citizen shouldn’t ask bothersome questions of the people we’re paying. Tsk! Tsk!

Enstrom, by the way, is James Enstrom, a UCLA epidemiologist who was alerted to Tran’s lack of credentials by a statistician from North Carolina, Stan Young, who’d first asked about it in July 2008 and was given the brush-off. Balmes is another CARB board member who was alerted to the problem by Enstrom in December 2008 before the board voted on the rule. Both he and Nichols chose to withhold the Tran information from the full board.

Speaking of Balmes, he, like Nichols, also said he knew enough to cast his vote for the truck rule regardless of Tran’s report.

“I based my original vote for the truck rule on what I know of the science, not on Tran’s report,” he told me in an email. “Therefore, I do not see the need to suspend the rule based on Tran’s misrepresentation.”

So was this report just some feel-good farce to lull the public into thinking we have a voice in our own governance? (Gosh, that would be so cynical.)

Balmes did allow that Tran’s misrepresentation casts doubt on CARB’s credibility overall and the report should be redone by an independent body.

At least we agree on that.

After reading both the draft and final reports, plus all the comments attached to both and the studies listed in the report, I also disagree that it was a mere compilation of available science, as Nichols, Balmes and others are now trying to color it.

Tran used some — but not all — studies available on how many people PM2.5 may kill each year. He dismissed studies that found little to no evidence of premature deaths. And he ignored parts of other studies showing elevated death rates in other parts of the country, but little to none in California.

That’s just one of the judgment-based aspects of Tran’s report that seemed to me — a mere layperson — biased toward a particular outcome.

Incidentally, Young began asking about Tran’s credentials in July 2008 after reading the report. “The reasoning appeared too flawed to be done by a capable statistician,” Young wrote to board member Telles.

Telles has been openly appalled not only by Tran’s deception but by the lackadaisical attitude among CARB staffers toward the issue.

Though CARB’s lawyer, Ellen Peter, has said the Dec. 2008 vote on the truck rule is legal, Telles has asked whether the board should take some kind of action to assure the public the rule has been properly vetted.

It was supposed to be on next week’s agenda, but all I could find was a discussion item looking at the rule’s economic impact.

“I have no idea what to do next if they ignore my request,” Telles told me. “It’s very frustrating.”

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

Caltrans needs a keeper

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
Nov. 22, 2009

In case you weren’t in court last month to catch this, we taxpayers are on the hook for close to $1 million because some bureaucrats at Caltrans thought they were above the law.

I know some of you are already pulling on your righteous boots ready to stomp all over lawyers and their “frivolous” lawsuits, but if it weren’t for this lawsuit, we the people who pay these Caltrans clowns would not know how self-serving some public servants can get.

Not that the Caltrans people were stuffing their pockets with tax dollars or anything like that.

In a way, it was worse: They apparently were willing to breach a contract and scuttle a pretty good deal in order to appease a California Transportation Commissioner — the ultimate yes man gone bad scenario.

Way back in 1993, Flying J (yeah, the same company that owns the now-shuttered Rosedale refinery) bought about four and a half acres outside Mojave along Highway 14 with plans to build one of their palatial truck stop plazas.

About 1999, Caltrans wanted the land for an access road to build the Highway 58 bypass.

Flying J and Caltrans signed a contract in 2001 in which Flying J would pay the state $40,200 and give them the four and a half acres in exchange for 20 acres of “excess” land nearby that Caltrans owned.

Except when it got to the CTC in October 2002, a commissioner named John Lawson pulled the deal from the consent agenda over concerns the state wasn’t getting enough for the land. (There’s more to Lawson, but in a sec.)

His actions sent Caltrans bureaucrats into a hand-wringing tailspin, as evidenced by a number of communications, called “right of way parcel diary” forms on which Caltrans workers jotted down instructions and updates chronicling how this land exchange was handled.

In the run up to the October meeting, the Flying J deal appeared right on track.

But a few weeks after the meeting, on Oct. 31, 2002, Caltrans bureaucrats decided to tuck tail on the exchange proposal as noted in this entry:, “Retreat, regroup, surrender.”

Lawson never actually voted “no” on the proposed land exchange and wasn’t even on the commission when it came back in February 2003.

Still bureaucrats were so worried about his disapproval they decided to kill their own deal, despite the contract and despite the fact that Flying J had already given up its own four and a half acres.

“Message from Steve Cameron (in Caltrans’ legal department) has some concerns — feels we should make the commission vote ‘NO’ — before renegotiating,” was noted on November, 18, 2002.

From then on out, Caltrans officials gave Flying J the royal government runaround until the commission voted against the exchange in February 2003, ordering that the 20 acres be put up for auction. The land was bought by a friend of Lawson’s, by the way, which just adds another layer of stink to the whole mess.

“It’s the worst bureaucratic nightmare coming true,” said Ron Katz. He and attorney Jack Yeh, both with the Los Angeles office of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, represented Flying J.

Ownership of the 20 acres is also up for question and Flying J is making the case they own it per the contract that the jury verdict says was in force.

As Flying J pursues the land (and appeals for higher damages), I can’t help thinking about the real losers in this case — you guessed it, Joe and Jane taxpayer.

Think about it.

We got no truck plaza, which would have meant jobs for people in Mojave and more taxes for Kern County. And we’re not only paying $1 million for the verdict (minimum), but we’re also still paying the salaries, health benefits and retirement for the bozos who hatched this debacle.

Hey, I’m glad we found out about all this. Kudos to Flying J for standing up to this garbage

But, really — does it always have to be the taxpayers who get hosed?

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

Lies and cover ups tarnish California Air Resources Board

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
Nov. 20, 2009

It’s not the lie, it’s the cover up that’ll get you.

How many times does this wisdom have to be pounded into the heads of bureaucrats?

The scandal over how a lead researcher behind California’s new diesel truck rules lied about his credentials continues to grow.

At Thursday’s California Air Resources Board meeting, one of the board members said the legitimacy of the rule is in question because of the lie and subsequent cover up and asked for a legal opinion on what should be done next.

The problem started with Hien Tran, the lead author of the report on which the new diesel rules were based, who lied about having a Ph.D. degree in statistics from U.C. Davis.

Though the lie was brought to some CARB bureaucrats’ attention well before the vote on the draconian rules last December, it was kept “in house” until I and an editorial writer for the San Diego Union Tribune got wind of it and started hammering on it early last spring.

Turns out, not all the board members, who voted on the rules based on Tran’s report, were told of his lies.

But some were — and kept mum.

The issue was brought to the full board’s attention at its September meeting in Diamond Bar by regular citizens.

At the time, board member John Telles, a medical doctor, was quite upset, saying, “This is the first time I’ve actually been apprised that there was fraud in the organization here.

“In my world, if an article was published by somebody who didn’t have a Ph.D. and said he had a Ph.D., the whole thing would be nixed...I just find it incredible.”
Well, he did some of his own digging and at this week’s meeting he asked that CARB’s legal counsel issue an opinion on what more should be done.

Telles also laid out a stunning chronology that revealed many CARB muckey-mucks, including chair Mary Nichols, knew about the lie before the vote and never said anything.

Tran’s lie was first brought up by Dr. Stan Young in November 2008 to the California Secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency, who sent Young a letter dated Nov. 4, 2008, assuring him of Tran’s credentials.

Then on Dec. 3 and 4, 2008, UCLA professor Jim Enstrom contacted three CARB board members telling them of Tran’s indiscretion.

One of those board members, who I’ve reported was John Balmes, asked CARB staffers to investigate.

By Dec. 10, Tran had confessed. Those in the know included Nichols, Balmes and at least five other top CARB members.

The vote on the diesel rules using Tran’s report was the next day, Dec. 11, 2008 and the full board wasn’t told.

Even after the cat was out of the bag at last September’s meeting, Telles said, “Staff never mentioned that they had this information prior to the vote.”

Based on all that, Telles said, the legitimacy of the vote is in question as well as the legitimacy of the truck rule “and CARB itself.”

“How we handle this reflects on the future credibility of CARB.”

Yes, it does. Just ask Richard Nixon.

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