GUEST COLUMNIST

New ozone limits would also limit jobs, economic growth

David Young
GUEST COLUMNIST

Although North Carolina’s economy has made progress in recent years, job growth has started to slow. In fact, the 5.7 percent unemployment rate today is actually slightly higher than it was in January. Our economic recovery is far from guaranteed, and a rising unemployment rate is a clear sign that we need to be on the lookout for anything that might threaten our continued recovery.

The more than 260,000 people currently looking for work in our state can’t afford to see their government enact policy that would make it more difficult for them to find a secure, high-paying job. Yet that is precisely what a new standard for ozone proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could do.

As a small businessman, a former county commissioner, and former president of the North Carolina Association of Counties, I know full well just how difficult these county-by-county targets can be to meet. In fact, many counties here in North Carolina and across the country have yet to even achieve the 2008 standard. How can they possibly be expected to attain compliance with even more stringent regulations?

The answer is that they cannot. Even the EPA can’t tell us how they expect the new standards to be met. In their proposal, they simply threw up their hands and said the ozone reduction would come from as-yet-unknown solutions.

The pain of the new ozone regulations will not be felt just by those already unemployed and searching for work. It will be harder for them, but they will also be joined by thousands of their neighbors. Estimates indicate that as many as 1.4 million American jobs may be lost as a result of the proposed ozone rules, many of them right here in North Carolina.

Factories and power plants will find themselves unable to afford the cost of compliance and as they close, more people will find themselves out of work. Some of those jobs may even go overseas, possibly never to return.

And as they continue to search for work, the unemployed will face higher prices for everything from electricity to groceries as businesses that try to comply are forced to absorb the costs of compliance. Electricity rates alone may increase as much as 23 percent, while the average family would get hit with an estimated $2,000 in additional expenses per person annually. That’s a bitter pill to swallow for any family, regardless of their employment prospects.

Every time our nation has come out of an economic recession, we have turned to innovative small businesses to create jobs and growth. I can tell you, as a longtime small business owner myself, these types of cost increases hit small businesses just as hard. The proposed regulations by the EPA would make it much more difficult for small businesses to grow and expand and much more difficult to create the kinds of jobs that people in our communities want. To succeed, small businesses need a stable economy, with steady costs and a vibrant workforce.

We must not ignore the economic reality that confronts North Carolina and the nation. We need to carefully review what our elected officials are doing in Washington that might make it easier — or harder — for us to continue to see economic growth and job creation.

It’s vital that we urge our leaders to weigh the costs and the benefits of all proposed laws and regulations. If they do that with the EPA’s proposed ozone restrictions, it will become crystal clear that the costs outweigh the benefits at this time.

President Obama has already asked the EPA once to withdraw new ozone regulations, citing the potential economic consequences. He should do so again.

Rather than forcing hard-working Americans to shoulder the cost of this expensive new regulation, we should be coming together to find ways to help counties achieve the 2008 ozone standard. That’s something that we can all get behind, confident in the knowledge that it will protect our state’s jobs and economic future.

David Young is a former county commissioner in Buncombe County, a former president of the N.C. Association of Counties, and a small businessman.