New Jersey Governor Fumes at Bush Over Clean-Air Regulations.

Byline: Alex Nussbaum

Apr. 21--A week after New Jersey flunked its latest clean-air exam, Governor McGreevey came to Hackensack to place the blame on the Bush administration.

McGreevey took his latest shot at the White House on a visit to an asthma and allergy clinic at Hackensack University Medical Center. He warned that the state would never meet new federal standards for healthy air without more federal pressure on polluting power plants in other states.

But although the governor won praise for his own clean-air proposals Tuesday, activists and doctors also had a message for him: Forget about Bush. There's more New Jersey should be doing to make it safe to breathe, they said.

The state has to provide more incentives to get motorists out of their cars and into mass transportation, some environmentalists said. Others said the governor should push for a ban on smoking in restaurants and workplaces.

"To turn down what we know is a worse problem and to jump on the bandwagon of outdoor air pollution seems a little hypocritical," said Dr. Arthur Torre, co-chairman of the Pediatric Asthma Coalition of New Jersey. "I mean, are you for people breathing clean air or aren't you?"

McGreevey's tour of the hospital's Center for Allergy, Asthma & Immune Disorders came a week after federal officials announced that every county in the state failed new, stricter smog pollution standards.