June 25, 2004
Tithing Only 10 Percent of POLA Budget May Be Too Little, So Board Acts to Spend More
By Arthur R. Vinsel, Community News Reporter

     A bid to devote 10 percent of the Port of Los Angeles annual budget expressly to help clear the air of lung-scarring particles and pollution fumes inhaled by millions living and working in a fume-shrouded Southland has been adopted by the Harbor Commission—with slight compromise—in an historic tradeoff of big bucks for better breathing.
     The panel voted June 9 to adopt a proposal revised from the 10 percent set-aside recommended by the Port Community Advisory Committee (P-CAC) that establishes a formula in conferences with POLA staff for setting annual smog elimination allocations. Some years, it may spend even more.
     “This would establish a process,” said Commissioner Camilla Townsend Kocol, who offered an amendment to the straight 10 percent P-CAC recommendation dating to January. She co-chairs that agency as well and later said the decision is even better than its formulators had hoped to achieve. Some years, more than 10 percent of POLA’s revenues may go to air cleanup.
     She proposed approving the motion that day, but eliminating a set amount in favor of a negotiated figure each year, after Commissioner Elwood P. Lui objected, saying the city attorney found the 10 percent would bind future commissions. He is a lawyer and retired juvenile court judge.
     Harbor Commission President Nick Tonsich, an environmental law attorney, recused himself and left the chambers before the 4-0 vote, citing the fact he owns shares of a company working on a system to reduce steamship pollution that might conceivably profit from the action.
     “This is wonderful. It’s even better than what we’d asked,” Commissioner Kocol remarked following the June 9 vote to create a means to consider the 10 percent formula in each year’s budget based on possibly changing circumstances such as port income and increases in shipping or offsetting of air pollution through improved technology and emissions control.
     During the past two years, for example—with a growing emphasis on environmental issues since the late ’90s—the Port spent $41 million on what it terms environmental stewardship, versus revenues totaling $980 million for that 24-month period. This is well under 10 percent, in fact less than half of $98 million the P-CAC formula would require in a comparable two-year span. Paramount to success of the allocation plan would be specifying exactly what programs are most important and timely, owing to the fact that while many measures have begun, the port and shipping volume are also mushrooming.
     “Ten percent may be enough or it may not,” observed Tonsich. Deputy City Attorney Tom Russell, as the port’s assigned legal counsel, noted the P-CAC resolution should have been more specific on the length of time 10 percent of revenues would be needed as well as referencing the particular sources of pollution responsible.
     “Nobody in this room is going to argue that we’re not polluters,” observed Commissioner Tom Warren, a longshore union official. “I work on the docks. I want to see the air cleaned up. But we cannot guarantee 10 percent a year.”
     Longtime POLA critic, community activist and P-CAC member
     Noel Park said earlier during the public comment period that it appeared to him language of the harbor staff’s report was not terribly encouraging.
     “When you decode it, it says this (10 percent) is ‘way too much money,” he warned. “Be careful in bringing this report to the P-CAC. These people have delved seriously into this for two years now. They will see through it.”
     Someone asked Park for his opinion as he was leaving after the measure passed.
     “The public trust matters a lot more than the Tidelands Trust.
     That’s my comment,” he remarked.

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