By Brett Rosenberg
January 31, 2005

Senator George V. Voinovich (OH) addressed the mayors during the 73rd Annual Winter Meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Senator Voinovich reserved most of his remarks for his Clear Skies Act, a bill he and Senator James Inhofe (OK) recently reintroduced. However, he spent considerable time discussing the importance of other city issues such as the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, work pending on the highway bill reauthorization, water and wastewater infrastructure, and Homeland Security.

Senator Voinovich thanked Conference President Akron Mayor Donald L. Plusquellic for his five terms of service as a mayor of Akron and the mayors in the audience for their involvement in the organization. As a former mayor himself, and later the governor of Ohio, Voinovich said that he has "special eyes about the challenges that cities and other local governments face." Among these many challenges, unfunded mandates causing severe economic strain on local governments in spite of the Senator's 1992 unfunded mandate relief legislation. As Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley discussed the day before, unfunded mandates continue to impede local economic development and Voinovich pledged to work to ease these burdens and encouraged mayors to form coalitions with other organizations of elected officials and let their opinions known to Congress.

Voinovich stated his commitment to preserve the CDBG program, to the applause of the mayors. CDBG, according to the Senator, "is the finest federal program ever to impact cities." Citing press reports that CDBG funding may face reductions, Voinovich said he will "go to the wall" to protect the program, and even push the federal government to expand it. Voinovich also delved into other legislative priorities, expressing the importance of the highway bill to cities' economies, reforming clean water and water infrastructure rules to ease unfunded mandates, tort reform, and working to more directly funnel Homeland Security funding to local governments.

The Clear Skies Initiative, which President Bush first proposed in 2002, provided the centerpiece of Voinovich's remarks. Last year, Voinovich and Inhofe introduce S. 1844, The Clear Skies Act, on behalf of the President; however, the bill never came to fruition in the Congress. The Act, according to the Senator, will bring relief to regions nationwide facing air pollution from coal-burning electric utilities while not causing undo economic hardship on communities, especially those facing non-attainment for the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) standards for fine particle pollution and ground-level ozone.

In expressing that a non-attainment designation can drive away businesses looking to expand in an area, or prevent new manufacturers from relocating, Voinovich said that current clean air regulations cost jobs and hurt local economic development. Current EPA regulations do not recognize the global economy or the impacts of its stricter and costlier regulations on cities, he said

The Clear Skies Act, according to the Senator, will ease some of these economic burdens while providing cleaner air for everyone. The Act, as currently written, along with new EPA diesel rules, will bring 278 of the 317 counties currently out of attainment for particulates and ozone into attainment by 2015. Additionally, according to Voinovich, Clear Skies will reduce sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury emissions from power plants by 70 percent through the "most aggressive and substantial clean air initiative ever." Through a phased-in series of pollution reduction targets and a market-based cap and trade system, this program will provide regulatory certainty to the utility industry and the business community while easing pollution from power plants by 2018.

Voinovich encouraged the mayors to contact their senators and support the Clear Skies Act.