SACRAMENTO (AP) -- An Assembly committee on Monday reversed itself on a pair of global warming bills, approving new fuel standards that last week it had deemed too burdensome on industry.
Democrats mustered the bare minimum votes in the Assembly Transportation Committee to pass bills by Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, which she called solid steps toward meeting California's new greenhouse gas emission targets.
"Until we attack the amount of fuel we use, the kind of fuel we use and the vehicles we drive, we are not going to meet our greenhouse gas goals," Kehoe said in an interview after the hearing.
Republicans have said the bills would impose standards that should be set by industry based on consumer demand.
Most Democrats supported the bills last week, but the measures failed when Republicans and a handful of Democrats voted against them or abstained. Kehoe brought them up to be reconsidered again.
Monday's close votes illustrate the division between California lawmakers over how best to reduce California's greenhouse gas emissions as the state begins to implement its landmark global warming law this year.
The reversal also coincides with a new investigation by Assembly Democrats into allegations by former state employees over whether aides to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have sought to limit the scope of global warming regulations on behalf of industry.
Democrats last week criticized Schwarzenegger's office for inappropriately lobbying the state Air Resources board, after its former chairman and executive director told of top governor's office staff issuing directives and pressuring members of the independent panel.
The Schwarzenegger administration has called the claims by former chairman Robert Sawyer and executive director Catherine Witherspoon mischaracterizations and said the governor's office was acting in a coordinating role. Schwarzenegger fired Sawyer June 27 and Witherspoon resigned in protest.
Kehoe acknowledged the legislative uproar over the air resources board may have helped her bills.
"I do think what happened last week makes it clear the Legislature should exercise its judgment," Kehoe said.
California, which is the 12th-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, has set a 2020 deadline to reduce its heat-trapping gases by about a quarter. The transportation sector accounts for about 40 percent of the state's emissions.
One of Kehoe's bills would entrench in law an executive order Schwarzenegger issued earlier this year requiring the Air Resources Board to set up a program to reduce the carbon content in transportation fuels by 10 percent by 2020.
The second bill would require diesel fuel sold in the state to contain at least 5 percent of what is known as "biodiesel" by 2010. Biodiesel is a mixture that can contain vegetable oil, animal fat and waste grease and is considered less harmful to the environment that petroleum.
Critics last week testified that the state may not have enough biodiesel to meet the proposed standards. Kehoe amended the bill to direct the California Energy Commission to study biodiesel supplies before the mandate is enacted.
The senator has some legislative maneuvering to do before the bills move to the Assembly floor. Both were referred to the Natural Resources Committee, which is not scheduled to meet before a Friday deadline to move policy bills out of committee. Kehoe said she would petition lawmakers to send the bills directly to a committee that could hear them sooner.
Kehoe did not bring up a third bill that would have mandated that at least half the cars and light trucks sold in California run on clean alternative fuels by the year 2020. She said she did not have not have the votes to win passage.
(Read the bills SB 140, SB 210 and SB 494 at www.senate.ca.gov )
