Supporters of California's CO2 Control Plan Enlist Former Nixon-Regan Advisor
By John O'Dell May 3, 2010
As backers of a ballot initiative that would block implementation of California's controversial greenhouse gas regulations prepare to qualify the measure for the state's November ballot, supporters of the rules announced today that former U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz has signed on as honorary co-chairman of their effort.
The move is an attempt, by evoking Schultz' links to former President Ronald Reagan, to persuade conservative voters in the state that supporting the greenhouse gas rules, bundled together in a 2006 measure called AB (Assembly Bill) 32, is an honorable thing to do even if you don't like government regulation.
The anti-AB 32 campaign, which initially billed itself as the California Jobs initiative - a name later charged by the state attorney general, who deemed it misleading - is backed largely by a quartet of large oil companies and distributors that stand to see their costs of operating in California go up as they would be forced to improve pollution controls at their refineries and transportation terminals.
State Attorney General Jerry Brown, a liberal Democratic and a 2010 gubernatorial candidate, took issue with the initiative backer's ballot title and, using his office's legal power to rename initiatives, has ordered that its official ballot title will be a description of what it would do: "Suspends Air Pollution Control Laws Requiring Major Polluters to Report and Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions That Cause Global Warming Until Unemployment Drops Below Specified Level for Full Year."
Schultz will serve as co-chairman of and a spokesman for the Californians for Clean Energy and Jobs coalition, which opposes the effort to block implementation of AB 32. A longtime California resident, Schultz was Secretary of Labor and Secretary of the Treasury in the Nixon Administration and was Secretary of State under Reagan.
An economist, he was a professor at the University of Chicago before entering politics and presently is a fellow at Stanford University's conservative-leaning Hoover Institution.
While the anti-AB 32 campaign claims implementation of the measure right now would cost jobs and stymie the state's economic recovery, Schultz said in a statement today that he believes blocking the initiative "will seriously harm" the growth of clean energy ventures in the state and "undermine efforts" to break the nation's dependence on imported oil.
John O'Dell, Senior Editor
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