Alex Camarda of Reinvent Albany opposes Intros 561-A and 11

Thank you, Chair Gennaro.

My name is Alex Camarda.

I'm a senior policy advisor for Reinvent Albany, a government watchdog group.

Reinvent Albany supports the Civilians Air Complaint Program, believing it's a creative, innovative way to leverage civic-minded New Yorkers.

To extend the compliance reach of the Department of Environmental Protection to enforce laws against idling.

We're concerned by the bills before the committee today, in particular 561A and Intro 11, both of which we oppose.

We oppose 561A because it creates numerous loopholes that will result in more idling, more air pollution, more asthma, and more related diseases like cancer and heart disease.

These loopholes include diesel regeneration, enabling buses to idle anywhere along their routes, enabling buses to idle for 30 minutes without clear beginning and end points,

allowing vehicles to idle due to undefined mechanical problems, allowing vehicles that have auxiliary battery-powered units in good working condition, which is undefined, to also idle.

More importantly, these loopholes will make it difficult for both complainants and the DEP to discern between an exception to the idling law and improper

Idling.

DEP and complainants, I'm sorry, I already mentioned that.

We also oppose intro number 11 because we think that increasing the fines is unnecessary.

We think the current fine levels are changing behavior already, and idling has been greatly reduced in many neighborhoods across the city.

We also think that it will increase delinquency on the part of respondents, the commercial vehicle companies.

What we see for fines above $1,000 currently is that the delinquency rates are 60% or higher.

So that will cause complainants to...

Not participate because they will not be paid their incentive because the companies won't be paying.

Thank you.