State regulators and local hazardous materials inspectors are looking to change the way they inspect thousands of businesses throughout the state.
Right now, regulators are required to inspect businesses once a year or once every three years. They want to focus more on businesses and industries with a history of health and safety violations and less on businesses in lower risk industries with good records.
The push for reform came after the Los Angeles County Fire Department led a multiyear effort to uncover hazardous materials in the Jewelry Mart in downtown Los Angeles several years back.
Earlier this month, a reform task force released a preliminary set of recommendations that would give higher inspection priority to “industrial sectors with serious compliance problems,” while giving lower priority to those businesses and industries “using the latest state-of-the-art technology and a demonstrated history of good compliance.”
Lower risk facilities most likely would be required to report their own compliance with hazardous materials regulations and be subject to spot checks.
The recommendations should be finalized later this year and then put into a bill package to take to the state Legislature next year.
The task force’s recommendations are being greeted with optimism by the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, a Sacramento-based group representing business.
“We are positive about this proposal,” said Gino DiCaro, spokesman for the association. “It looks like it could decrease the large amount of regulatory inspections of manufacturers that are good actors and are routinely in compliance. That’s a lot of wasted paperwork and time and energy when we really need to focus on manufacturers that are the bad actors.”
Opposition is expected from environmental groups. They have been the strongest proponents of routine inspections as a deterrent and have traditionally opposed self-reporting as inadequate.
Green Chemicals
On a related matter, the California Environmental Protection Agency is looking at an even more sweeping overhaul involving the use of chemicals in the workplace.
On May 1, Cal-EPA Secretary Linda Adams unveiled the “Green Chemistry Initiative,” designed to reduce or eliminate toxic chemicals in the manufacturing process instead of the current way of limiting emissions or discharges at the back end.
“The Green Chemistry Initiative will provide recommendations for developing a consistent means for evaluating risk, reducing exposure, encouraging less toxic industrial processes and identifying safer, non-chemical alternatives,” Adams wrote in a May memo outlining the initiative.
Adams characterized the current regulatory system as “product by product, chemical by chemical and even city by city approaches that can often have unintended, even regrettable consequences.”
Cal-EPA officials said this initiative still is in its preliminary phase and is years away from actual implementation. But it’s already caught the attention of the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, which has resisted most attempts to regulate chemicals.
Enterprise Zone Regs
Yet another state program is getting a revamp: This time it’s the way the state administers enterprise zones. The impact will be felt by both employers and employees in the next few weeks.
The state enterprise zone program allows companies moving to specially designated zones to receive substantial tax credits for hiring people who live within the zone.
Thanks to state legislation last year in response to abuses in the way enterprise zone hiring tax credits have been handed out, the system has been standardized.
“Before, each zone was given general indications on the documentation needed from businesses to receive hiring tax credits,” said Frank Luera, chief administrator of the state’s enterprise zone program. “Now, there are consistent standards.”
Each application for hiring tax credits must verify its location within the zone and determine which of 14 categories employees fit into to qualify for the hiring tax credits. These range from being ex-convicts to being economically disadvantaged or previously unemployed.
The location requirement is key, Luera said, because employers often played fast and loose with geography with the old system.
The issue came up last year when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger renewed state authorization for 23 enterprise zones around the state.
The only enterprise zone in Orange County is in Santa Ana. The governor’s move last year didn’t cover Santa Ana, which is set to see its authorization up for renewal next year. Officials in Santa Ana already are lobbying for renewal.
Fine is a staff writer with the Los Angeles Business Journal.
