EDITORIAL\Clouding the air\Elitists attack job-friendly anti-smog plan.

CALIFORNIA businesses and working people received some encouraging news Monday when the state's latest clean-air plan won the preliminary approval of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Whether environmental elitists, who ceaselessly deride the remarkable progress that has been made over the past 40 years to clean our air, will leave well enough alone remains to be seen. Once again, some of them are talking about going to court and trying to dictate what should be done.

"There are no real measures in the plan," charged Gail Ruderman Feuer, senior attorney for the National Resource Defense Council and wife of Los Angeles City Councilman Michael Feuer. "It's a wish list of what state and local governments would like to see over the next 15 years."

Linda Waade, executive director of the Coalition for Clean Air, said that the plan gives businesses too much freedom and relies on unproven technologies.

That anti-business, rhetoric is distressingly familiar. It's also disturbing, given the elitists' success at holding up previous plans that failed to meet the unrealistic goals in federal clean-air laws. (A prior agreement between Sacramento and Washington was set aside 13 months ago by federal District Judge Harry Hupp, who said his hands were tied by the law.)

If that happens again, Congress must change the law. Programs to clean the air can have enormous economic and social consequences. State and local agencies must have discretion if they are to deal with them in a reasonable, not to mention democratic, manner.

What's more, these agencies can point to a solid track record. There were but 23 first-stage smog alerts in Southern California in 1994, compared with 121 in 1977. There were only 13 from January through November last year.

Further, air quality should improve significantly after June 1, when service stations begin selling cleaner-burning gasoline. Officials estimate that the new fuel will reduce exhaust emissions by 15 percent and cancer risks by 30 percent.

Reformulated gasoline won't, of course, finish the job all by itself. More needs to be done. However, the easy work is over. Getting rid of the remaining pollutants is becoming progressively more difficult and costly.

That's all the more reason for allowing the state to lead the way. Californians endure the consequences of air-quality regulations, be they medical or economic. Decisions on these regulations should be made by people who are accountable to the voters, not unelected federal judges and self-appointed guardians of the public welfare.