Air-Emissions. Tax Credits.

AIR-EMISSIONS. TAX CREDITS. INITIATIVE STATUTE. Authorizes State Air Resources Board, and delegated air pollution control districts, to award $218 million in state tax credits annually, until January 2011, to encourage air-emissions reduction through acquisition, conversion, and retrofitting of vehicles, buses, and heavy-duty trucks; hearth products; construction vehicles and equipment; lawn and garden equipment; pumps and generators; ambient air pollution destruction technology; off-road, nonrecreational vehicles; port equipment; agricultural waste and rice straw conversion facilities; and through research and development. Requires study for air quality market-based incentive program for prescribed burning projects. Requires Board to adopt regulations. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local governments: This measure would result in net annual state General Fund revenue loss averaging in the tens of millions to over a hundred million dollars from 1999 to beyond 2010 for tax credits for air quality improvements. It would also result in revenue loss could exceed $218 million in some years. The measure would also result in an increase in local sales tax revenues, potentially in the millions of dollars annually through 2010-11, from purchases of equipment. State General Fund costs of about $4.7 million annually through 2010-11 for administration of the tax credit program would also occur. There would also be potential long-term savings to state and local governments, of an unknown amount, in health care expenditures.