Catherine Witherspoon resigned today, and unlike Robert Sawyer, it appears that this resignation was legitimate.  Witherspoon was incensed by Sawyer’s dismissal and the repeated attempts by the Governor to change the landmark global warming law through implementation in ways that he couldn’t change it in the legislative arena.

In interviews with The Times, Witherspoon said there had been a pattern of interference by the governor’s top staff in favor of industry lobbyists seeking to weaken or stall air pollution regulations, including the state’s landmark global warming law and proposed regulations on diesel construction equipment and wood products containing formaldehyde.

“They were ordering us to find ways to reduce costs and satisfy lobbyists,” she said, adding that the governor’s chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, and Cabinet Secretary Dan Dunmoyer took the lead on pressuring the agency staff and board chairman.

Adding insult to injury, she said, members of the governor’s staff have publicly blamed her and Sawyer for not doing more — conduct she described as “Orwellian … a triumph of appearances over reality.”

This will go completely nowhere on the national scene, where Arnold actually governs.  But within the state, more journalists are questioning the Governor’s commitment to the noble goals on global warming that he wastes no time espousing worldwide.  On the flip…

Here’s Evan Halper in the LA Times:

In public hearings and private negotiations, administration transportation officials are working to slow a planned crackdown by regulators on aging diesel construction equipment — among the state’s most noxious machinery and a major source of greenhouse gases […]

It is not the first time the governor has made bold promises on the environment while his administration dragged its feet behind the scenes. Schwarzenegger has vetoed bills that would put new taxes on polluters, spur the development of alternative fuels and help clean the air. He has accepted $1 million in campaign cash from the oil industry, and he had threatened to veto the global warming bill unless it was made more business-friendly.

Although the governor says he wants to hold polluters more accountable, administration officials recently signaled lawmakers that Schwarzenegger may not support a separate legislative crackdown. Lawmakers are proposing to prohibit the dirtiest equipment from being used on public works projects bankrolled with state bond money approved by voters last year.

Here are Greg Lucas and Matthew Yi in the SF Chronicle:

“The governor has made his name across the world as the jolly green governor, and now we have the regulators saying his inner circle has pressured them to go slow because the big industries don’t want us to go too quickly,” said Jamie Court, president of the Foundation for Taxpayers and Consumer Rights, a consumer watchdog group.

The air board shakeup has as much to do with politics as air quality. After Schwarzenegger pledged to sign AB32, his chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, tried to shape the measure in the Legislature. After AB32 became law, the governor’s staff tried to control its implementation, according to lawmakers and others involved in passage of the bill.

Much of the responsibility for implementation rests with the air board, whose members are appointed by the governor, but who have a long history of independence.

“Every signal the board got from the governor’s office staff was, ‘Slow down, don’t hurt industry, don’t get ahead of us on greenhouse gases,’ ” Witherspoon said in an interview on Monday.

Schwarzenegger simply doesn’t practice what he preaches, and the high-profile resignations on the Air Resources Board are waking people up to that. 

Democratic leaders have rightly called for hearings this week to assess the political pressure being applied by the governor to the board.  And Dan Walters notes that Arnold’s attempt to manufacture AB32 into solely a cap-and-trade law is being met with resistance:

Environmental groups, backed by Democratic legislators, have denounced the administration’s cap-and-trade policy as beyond the intent of AB 32, however, favoring a more direct regulatory mechanism on emissions. The Democratic version of the state budget, in fact, seeks to deny funds for any development of cap-and-trade policy until broader studies are completed.

That’s fairly strong, and I applaud it.  But the court of public opinion is really the only one Schwarzenegger pays attention too.  Democrats who want AB 32 to be implemented as it was written need to fan out and make the case to their constituents that Arnold is trying to stop progress on global warming.  This could drag his popularity down considerably and weaken his hand in future negoitations.  The time is now.