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Knatz ‘disappointed’ in court ruling but looks to lower court for backing
The head of the Port of Los Angeles said Tuesday the port’s clean-trucks program is continuing without interruption despite an appeals court ruling against controversial parts of the program.
Geraldine Knatz, executive director of the port, said important parts of the program that have been enforced remain in place as the port prepares its legal response to last week’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
“I’m pleased that some of the key provisions of the program, the ban (on older, dirtier trucks) and the fee collection (on trucks not meeting specific emissions standards) that are critical to what we are trying to achieve, haven’t been touched at all by the court,” Knatz said in an interview.
“Nothing changes to the program now. Any of the elements that were called into question were parts of the program that had not been enforced yet,” she said.
The appeals court in San Francisco, siding with a challenge by the American Trucking Associations, last week said a federal judge had erred in not granting the ATA an injunction against a portion of the clean-trucks plan requiring that truckers serving the port obtain concessions available only to company drivers to haul freight there. The three-judge panel sent the case back to the judge, who now will hear new arguments on the request for the injunction.
“We are disappointed and we’re going to try to work hard to convince the lower court that there’s merit to what we are trying to do,” Knatz said.
The effort to clean up pollution around the port, she said, “is working beautifully. It is doing exactly what we had hoped it would do.”
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Ms. Knatz is deceiving the people of Los Angeles. She knows very well that there was no chance that the Clean Truck Programs' fee collection or older truck ban was in jeopardy or would be affected by the Court because the American Trucking Associations supports the Clean Truck Program and the ATA's lawsuit never challenged the Clean Truck Program. ATA's lawsuit challenged only the Concession Plans, which, as the Court ruled, contain illegal and unconstitutional regulations.
The Court noted that the concession plan "is a rather blatant attempt to decide who can use whom for drayage services, and is a palpable interference with prices and services. Neither motor carriers nor their customers (the enormous interstate and foreign shipping industry) would be able to select those with whom they would choose to contract.”
And that “As to smaller companies that cannot afford the vast increase in capital requirements for the purchase of equipment and personnel expenditures needed to turn independent contractors into employees, the result would likely be fatal. And that means that those smaller carriers, and their employees, and even independent contractors who depend upon them, will be out of work. One wonders why it should be thought that they should just put up with the loss any more than employees of a company should be forced to abide their wrongful termination and the resulting emotional damages and stress that termination causes.”
It is time for the port and the city of Los Angeles government to be honest about the Clean Truck Program.