Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. form letter to constituent, March 27, 1992

March 27, 1992 Dear Constituent: I wanted to acknowledge and thank you for your letter concerning the so-called Low Emission Vehicle ("California LEV Cars") legislation. As most of you know by now, this bill was killed in the Senate Judiciary Committee by a vote of 6-5. Accordingly, the House version of this bill will not be reported to the Floor. In effect, this means that I will not have the oppor¬ tunity to vote on this bill during the 1992 Session of the General Assembly. In any event, you should be aware that I have concerns about the effectiveness of adopting California auto emission standards in Maryland. To wit, whether it is premature to force the citizens of Maryland to pay for a potentially costly, optional program before completing a cost benefit analysis of LEV in Maryland. In this regard, I have been presented with wildly con¬ flicting evidence. Proponents claim the technology required to implement LEV already exists and would only add around $200.00 to the price of a new automobile sold in Maryland. Conversely, opponents claim the technology for low-emission and electric cars does not exist and that implementing LEV mandated pollution controls would add $1,000.00 to the price of a new car. Moreover, while the proponents claim that adoption of LEV is the most effective way of addressing ozone pollution and that the failure of LEV would put undue pressure on private industry to further reduce stationary source emissions, oppo¬ nents point to evidence that the negligible one percent additional reduction in auto hydrocarbon emissions attribu¬ table to adoption of the LEV program is simply not worth the cost. Further, organized labor has estimated that adoption of LEV in Maryland would result in 13-26,000 lost auto industry jobs. Opponents also claim that the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 mandate emission control requirements that may satisfy