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PHOENIX — Proposed rules to regulate greenhouse gases on new vehicles may cause some motorists to hang on to their older, more polluting cars longer, a report says.

Allen Malanowski, an economist for the Governor's Regulatory Review Council, said the new standards being pushed by Gov. Janet Napolitano and the state Department of Environmental Quality will increase the cost of cars and trucks that have to meet them.

Even the DEQ says the price tag could increase by $1,000 or more when the regulation is fully implemented.

Malanowski is recommending the council approve the regulations anyway.

He said the higher cost has to be weighed against increased fuel efficiency, which will lower operating costs.

And the council also needs to consider the effects of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and "long-term probable benefits to the health and safety of society," Malanowski said.

But Bobbi Sparrow, pres-ident of the Arizona Automobile Dealers Association, said the conclusions are based on erroneous information.

She said making new cars that meet lower emission standards is likely to add $3,000 to the cost. The higher cost, she said, will simply encourage people to old on to their older — and more polluting — vehicles.

That, Sparrow added, goes to the central flaw in the proposal.

She said studies show the oldest 5 percent of vehicles on the road cause 75 percent of the pollution.

Sparrow said this proposal does nothing to get those cars and trucks off the road.

And she said it preserves the state's vehicle registration fee system, which pegs the tax to the value of the vehicle: Owners of the newest cars pay the most; the lowest fee is on the oldest vehicles.

"There are people who won't give up that $20 registration fee," she said.

She also said nothing in the report addresses the mandate in the rule that 11 percent of vehicles sold in Arizona, beginning with the 2012 model year, emit no emissions at all.

Aside from the cost of these vehicles, which are not in common production, she said no one has studied the cost of setting up the infrastructure to support their use, such as hydrogen-refueling stations.

Whose analysis is correct will be a key point of debate when the council meets Tuesday to review the regulations.

That vote is crucial: Council action is the last step in enacting the rules, though other legal hurdles remain. One involves federal law.

The controversial rules are modeled after those enacted in California.

So far, though, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has refused to give California permission to enact greenhouse-gas emission standards different from federal rules.

There are, however, no federal standards for carbon-dioxide and other greenhouse-gas tailpipe emissions.

Instead the only action taken at the federal level has been to mandate increased fuel-efficiency standards, a move EPA officials said also will have the beneficial side effect of reducing greenhouse gases.

California has sued the EPA to force the agency to give it a waiver; Arizona, whose ability to enact the rules is linked to whether California wins, has joined in that lawsuit.

Separately, the Arizona Senate has approved a measure to block the Napolitano ad-ministration from imposing any greenhouse-gas-emission standards.

Sen. Jake Flake, R-Snow-flake, acknowledged the governor could veto that measure if it gains House approval. But Flake said he already is weighing a backup plan to tack the provisions onto an environmental bill the governor wants.

That new rule would require each automobile manufacturer to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions from its total sales in the state by 37 percent by 2016.

It would not ban the sale of any particular type of vehicle now sold in Arizona. Instead it sets standards for how much more each manufacturer's "fleet" of vehicles sold in the state must reduce carbon dioxide from current levels.

That means some models of vehicles may not achieve that 37 percent reduction by 2016. But they could continue to be sold as long as sufficient other models with greater greenhouse-gas reductions were purchased by Arizona consumers.

And the rule also would mandate the 11 percent of each manufacturer's vehicles sold in Arizona beginning in 2011 have no emissions at all.

That would increase to 16 percent by 2018 and beyond.