And now, the case of the vanishing commuter curbs.
Backpedaling before a new Congress hostile to regulations, the Environmental Protection Agency has all but disowned a Clean Air Act requirement that big companies in smoggy areas like Baltimore try to reduce solo commuting by workers.
For Maryland's largest employers, it signals further freedom from a federal requirement that many businesses had dreaded and fought.
EPA officials, in oral and written statements over the past two weeks, have sought to stress the "tremendous flexibility" states have in getting businesses to develop and carry out plans for enticing workers to leave their cars.
In the process, though, the officials have made confusing and apparently conflicting comments about whether anyone should bother to obey one of the most controversial provisions in the sweeping 1990 air pollution law.
Mary D. Nichols, EPA's assistant administrator for air programs, said late last month that the agency does not intend to enforce the commuter curbs called for in the law. She said the air quality benefits of commuter programs would be "minuscule," so "we're not going to enforce them."
Peter Kostmayer, the EPA's mid-Atlantic regional administrator in Philadelphia, made similar comments in an interview with The Sun:
"Look, we're not going to arrest people and lock them up if they don't do this," he said. "They probably don't have to do the plans, frankly. But if they have made an investment and spent some time making plans, it's probably to everyone's advantage to carry them out."
The remarks are typical of a regulatory agency under siege from Congress and statehouses around the country. In recent months, especially since the Republican sweep in November's elections, EPA officials have been downplaying their threats to withhold millions in highway funds as states rebelled against federal programs to promote cleaner gasoline and reduce motor vehicle emissions.
The "employee commute options" requirement is something of a special case, however -- an environmental program that no one loves, not even environmentalists, because it would reduce smog-forming pollution by only 1 percent.
The commuting provision requires Baltimore and eight other urban areas to develop programs for reducing "work-related vehicle trips and miles traveled by employees." Employers with 100 or more workers are to reduce the number of people driving alone to work by 25 percent. In the Baltimore area, which has the nation's sixth-worst smog, the law affects 2,000 businesses, government agencies and institutions, with a total work force of 700,000. Employers are required to offer their workers incentives to form car pools or ride public transportation, or else to alter work schedules so that fewer people are commuting during morning rush hour.
From the outset, businesses complained about the costs -- estimated at $80 to $200 per employee. Corporations also objected to the threat of being penalized by EPA or the state if employees refused to alter commuting habits. Those complaints, and uncertainty about what the EPA expected, tied up regulations in Maryland for two years.
Seeking to defuse growing opposition, EPA made major concessions last summer. The agency said it would not punish )) any business that made a "good-faith effort" but failed to get its employees out of their cars. And EPA allowed employers to save costs by limiting their efforts to the warm months, when smog is a problem.
EPA's retreat finally cleared the way for Maryland to adopt a watered-down program, which requires businesses to develop plans but do little else, at least initially. Businesses had to register for the commuter program by November, then submit a plan by June 1996.
Now, the latest pronouncements by EPA officials have revived ++ efforts by Baltimore-area businesses to weaken or repeal the state's rules.
"It looks like the EPA is opening up another window of opportunity here to make some alterations," said Donald P. Hutchinson, president of the Greater Baltimore Committee. "There's a real question here of enforcement."
Michael Powell, a lawyer for businesses opposed to the commuter rules, said, "This has been a huge amount of resources and worry devoted to a program that never should have existed in the first place." He is a former counsel for the Maryland Department of the Environment.
Under Maryland's rules, businesses still must spend the money to survey their work force and prepare a plan for reducing commuting. Even if EPA and the state do not enforce the rules, some companies fear they could be hit by lawsuits from environmental groups for violating the law.
The EPA sought to clarify its position last week by releasing a letter from Ms. Nichols to an Illinois congressman who is seeking to repeal the commuter requirement.
She told Rep. Donald Manzullo, a Republican, that the EPA did not intend to punish businesses or "look over the shoulder" of states for failing to carry out commuter-reduction plans. But the law does not permit making the program voluntary, she added.
EPA officials insist they have not altered their position, just communicated it poorly. "We created about as much confusion as we could, had we tried to," acknowledged Steve Cochran, an air-quality policy adviser in EPA's Washington headquarters.
Merrylin Zaw-Mon, chief of air quality programs for Maryland, said she would have to consult with the state's new secretary of the environment, Jane T. Nishida, before deciding whether further changes are warranted. But she said that with its most recent remarks, the "EPA has lost all credibility" on the commuter program.
"They've punted to the states," she said. "If they make the statement that they're not going to enforce this provision of the ,, Clean Air Act, which state would be foolish enough to enforce it?"
Trying to change commuting habits was bound to raise a few hackles since most people drive to work alone because they like the privacy and freedom, said Gordon S. Bonham, director of the Center for Suburban and Regional Studies at Towson State University. His center has a $300,000 EPA grant to study the effort.
Even so, Dr. Bonham said, EPA managed to make a difficult situation worse by dragging its feet in telling states how to carry out the law, and then by issuing guidelines instead of regulations.
Ms. Zaw-Mon contends the commuter program has gotten a bad rap. "We have companies that are doing this and it's not all bad," she said.
One is the National Security Agency, the federal intelligence service with headquarters at Fort Meade. The agency is Anne Arundel County's largest employer.
NSA makes no secret of its efforts since the 1970s to encourage ride-sharing to reduce traffic and parking congestion. The agency says 20 percent of its work force rides in car pools or one of 32 agency-sponsored van pools, or takes public transit to work. Pool drivers get priority parking.
Another company that found changing commuting habits a snap is Kirk Stieff Co., the nation's oldest silversmith, in Hampden.
Seeking to cut production costs, the firm in July took the suggestion of its 116 employees and shortened the five-day workweek to four, which also cut commuting by 20 percent.
"Everyone won," said Gary Lyons, operations manager. "The environment won, Kirk Stieff has won and I think the employees won."