Don’t reroute scrap-and-replace-cars money from poor to rich areas

For California to reach the “tipping point” — getting enough zero-emission vehicles on our roads to significantly reduce our greenhouse gas air pollution and slow climate change — we need to keep our disadvantaged communities in the driver’s seat.

California crafted Clean Cars 4 All to do just that, and to help improve air quality in some of our most impoverished and polluted communities.

Through financial incentives, Clean Cars 4 All has helped more than 10,000 low-income drivers swap their old, gas guzzling, polluting cars for newer plug-in vehicles. In Stanislaus County alone, 528 cars have been replaced, and 317 customers are in the application process.

To be even more successful, this popular program needs more money. However, the administration is considering changes that will siphon dollars away from the families in disadvantaged communities — the very people that the program was designed to assist. Now is not the time to dilute our commitment to these communities.

According to the American Lung Association, California continues to have the worst air quality in the nation. People of color and those in poverty are among those more likely to live where the air can make you sick.

California families struggling to make ends meet have little discretionary money for a new car, let alone a plug-in vehicle. For them, there’s barely enough money for gas with prices hitting record highs, and little or nothing left for proper vehicle maintenance.

The average age of cars on our roads today is 12.2 years and nearly a quarter are models 2004 or older. Data shows that up to 17.3 percent of these cars fail smog tests. These are the same old cars that you will find in our most polluted communities.

The scrap-and-replace Clean Cars 4 All program offers up to $9,500 toward newer, cleaner vehicles. Qualified participants must live in a disadvantaged community, like Stanislaus, and have a household income at or below 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

Participants can use the money they save on other family needs instead of on an older vehicle’s maintenance or higher gas expenditures, not to mention the relief that comes with a reliable car.

Here’s where proposed changes will have a significant negative impact on low income communities: The California Air Resources Board would not only expand Clean Cars 4 All statewide, but also drop the disadvantaged community residency requirement.

At the same time, the expansion would overlap five existing programs which maintain the residency requirement. In other words, two Clean Cars 4 All programs will be operating in the same location, at the same time, but with different criteria and rules.

Further, the air board proposes to allocate $250 million to the statewide expansion while funding for the existing programs won’t be determined until later this summer. Without additional funding above the $50 million proposed in Governor Newsom’s May Revise, the programs will receive far less than what’s necessary.

If enacted, the budget proposal will leave disadvantaged communities on the side of the road while the air board’s expansion plan, with its conflicting rules and criteria, will leave participants bewildered. Because Clean Cars 4 All will be offered in all ZIP codes, affluent communities will be allowed to participate, redirecting resources from lower income families who need it most.

The fix is simple. Include the disadvantaged-community residency requirement in the statewide program and distribute the proposed funding more equitably to the worst air quality districts. The program needs to be easily understood and equitably managed to encourage participation so that older polluting cars can be retired.

We can and must expand Clean Cars 4 All statewide without doing harm to communities that need it most.