Reply to "new smog law in california"

I just received this reply from Senator Florez.

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.