The two major dailies in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, which also comprises a single non-attainment area for ground-level ozone under the Clean Air Act, have been covering a smog-related controversy that bears watching elsewhere in the country. The Star-Telegram's Scott Streater reported on March 26 that Texas Gov. Rick Perry wants to exempt most of one county, Ellis, from the pollution-reduction mandates that apply to the non-attainment area as a whole. It's a state proposal to US EPA, Streater reported, "that critics say could weaken clean-air efforts nationwide," by setting "a dangerous precedent and encourag(ing) industries to simply move outside the boundary." Heretofore, the EPA has held that entire counties must be included in non-attainment areas, and other states have been denied permission to create the kind of "partial designations" that Perry wants. In the Morning News, Randy Lee Loftis revealed on March 20 that U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, a Republican from Ellis County and chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, had pushed to exempt the entire county from the toughest ozone-reduction rules. This effort by Barton, Loftis reported, "could directly benefit two corporations linked to Barton campaign donations -- corporations now seeking state permits to boost allowed emissions of smog-causing pollution. "Although most of Ellis County is rural, it is North Texas' center of heavy industry, accounting for about 40 percent of the region's industrial emissions," Loftis wrote. Perry's proposal would group "the heavily industrial northwest corner of Ellis County" with the rest of the Dallas-Fort Worth non-attainment area for emission-reduction purposes, Streater reported. The rest of the county, however, "would be shielded from severe sanctions" that might hit an insufficient smog-reduction effort.