Welcome back to the podcast, bribes, windle, or steel. I'm Alexandra Rocky. Today we're going to hear the

story of how the Volkswagen emission scandal was uncovered from one of the regulators at the heart of it.

Alberto Ayala is now the executive director and air pollution control officer at the Sacramento

Metropolitan Air Quality Management District.

Throughout his career, he has worked to improve air quality for the people of California.

He's joined for this panel by our moderator Vasu Mutialla.

Vasu is a partner at Kobray and Kim's Hong Kong office,

and happily, this is his third podcast with us.

Thanks to Alexandra and Trace for the invitation. I am a civil servant. We serve the public.

Part of us doing this sort of thing is because we do feel a responsibility to share as a civil servant

in terms of, in this particular case, the lessons that we learn. I think that's really the key here.

And then just to put things in context for you, I'm sure not all of you are familiar with

environmental air quality management in the States. California is unique, and we have what I call a three-pillar

process for environmental protection. Fassu talked about the federal EPA. In Canada, you have

environment in Canada. In California, we have a state agency, the Air Resources Board. And then at the,

at the regional level, we have a number of regional agencies, the air districts.

So essentially what I did is I switched from the state agency to now my regional air district.

But we share responsibility.

We have delegated authority.

Sometimes we do some things.

Sometimes the state does something.

Sometimes CPA does other things.

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