[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 47 (Tuesday, March 14, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H3124-H3125]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      THE EMPLOYEE COMMUTE OPTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Manzullo] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MANZULLO. Mr. Speaker, the issue I want to speak about tonight 
involves a mandate imposed by Congress which must be enforced by the 
EPA. It is a plan that affects many of my constituents in the 16th 
congressional district of Illinois and many businesses in several 
cities across the country.
  Many governors have called this the most unreasonable, least thought-
out, least effective but very, very costly program ever proposed by the 
U.S. Congress. The plan, employer trip reduction, was mandated under 
the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990.
  Let me explain what this mandate is all about. Section 182(d)(1)(B) 
of the Clean Air Act requires employers of 100 or more employees in 
severe and extreme ozone nonattainment areas to increase passenger 
occupancy per vehicle in commuting trips between home and the workplace 
during peak travel periods by not less than 25 percent. The idea is to 
have people find some other mode of transportation to and from work 
other than using their car.
  The misnomer applied to this mandate is the Employee Commute Option. 
Some option. If the State elects not to implement this mandate, it 
stands to lose some of its transportation funds. In Illinois that is 
$700 million. In Pennsylvania, it is $900 million. In some States, 
fines levied against businesses that do not participate may range into 
the thousands of dollars.
  Areas across the country that face this mandate include Baltimore, 
New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Houston, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, San 
Diego, Ventura County and Orange County in California. Other affected 
States include Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, and Indiana.
  The EPA, in implementing guidelines for this Employee Commute Option, 
suggests other options for getting to work including mass transit, 
jogging, bicycle riding, car pooling, and walking.
  Well, in the 16th congressional district of Illinois there is a rural 
county, McHenry County, which is included in the Chicago consolidated 
statistical metropolitan area. That means residents in and around 
McHenry County who work in this rural area without sidewalks or mass 
transit system must car pool. This is a federally mandated car pooling 
and it is an outrage.
  When the amendments of the Clean Air Act were passed in 1990, I was 
not a Member of this body, and to the best of my knowledge there was 
never any formal debate on this issue in the House; never any specific 
hearings on the issue before it was simply slipped in to the Clean Air 
Act amendments.
  This past Sunday, Illinois Governor Edgar and I took the bold and 
courageous step of announcing a moratorium on the federally mandated 
employee commute option. He has directed the Illinois Department of 
Transportation not to enforce this measure. Why? An assistant 
administrator for the EPA admitted that air emissions reductions are, 
quote, ``minuscule,'' and her agency has stated it simply does not 
intend to enforce the mandate.
  This moratorium now puts Illinois in the same situation as 
Pennsylvania and Texas which have announced that they will not 
participate in enforcing the mandate. There is only one catch, Mr. 
Speaker: the employee trip reduction mandate is the law. The EPA may 
choose to not enforce it. The States may not enforce it. However, there 
is nothing to keep a Federal judge from enforcing it.
  No, the mandate is clear. It is law. It says that businesses with 
over 100 employees shall participate and decrease 
[[Page H3125]] the number of cars going to and from work. This will 
cost up to $210 million per year to enforce this unfunded mandate and 
that applies not only to the private business business but to the 
public sector.
  This law is so ridiculous that it says to a high school that has more 
than 100 teachers and administrators, that those teachers have to car 
pool. But the students do not have to car pool, so we would have the 
incredible result of teachers walking to work, having to hitchhike 
there to be picked up by their students. And students would rather go 
to school without their teachers so that they will not have to be 
taught the subject for the first hour. It is crazy. It is insane. But 
that is how ridiculous this mandate is.
  Data from Southern California indicates that forced car pooling costs 
companies over $100 per employee and $3,000 per vehicle taken off the 
road. And the EPA itself has estimated the tremendous cost into the 
billions of dollars annually to address a solution which itself calls 
minuscule.
                              {time}  1900

  I have introduced H.R. 325 to return the true meaning to the word 
``option.'' It makes the employer trip reduction mandate optional to 
the affected states. H.R. 325 is dedicated solely to correcting this 
single provision in the Clean Air Act. Nothing else. It does not 
decrease the quality of the air. This bill simply makes car pooling an 
option to reach the goal of clean air. This is not an environmental or 
anti-environmental bill. It simply makes car pooling voluntary in the 
menu of options available to achieve clean air standards.
  This is why this bill has such wide support. It is bipartisan, has 
more than 152 cosponsors, and I would encourage my colleagues to become 
cosponsors with us.

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