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PHOENIX — Gov. Janet Napolitano slapped down efforts by lawmakers to shelve her new vehicle emission standards, calling their legislation "micromanagement."

The governor vetoed HB 2017 Thursday, which would have barred the state Department of Environmental Quality from enacting any regulations curbing greenhouse-gas emissions.

Most immediately, that bill would have killed rules just approved by the Governor's Regulatory Review Council, which impose new carbon dioxide emission standards on new cars and truck sold in Arizona beginning in 2011.

The vetoed measure said no regulations limiting greenhouse gases could be enacted or enforced without legislative approval.

Napolitano said existing law already gives the DEQ full authority to set emission standards for vehicles — including setting limits on gases not already regulated, such as carbon dioxide, which has been linked to global warming.

Thursday's veto may not end the dispute.

Sen. Jake Flake, R-Snow-flake, who wrote the legislation, said one possibility would be attaching its provision to other environmental legislation.

Another alternative, Flake said, would be to sue: He contends state environmental laws do not give the DEQ authority to regulate carbon dioxide.

Napolitano directed the DEQ in 2006 to adopt the same greenhouse-gas emission standards already approved by the California Air Resources Board. The governor said her agency followed all the required legal procedures.

Those rules do not ban the sale of specific vehicles but instead require each manufacturer to reduce total greenhouse-gas emissions of all the cars and trucks sold in Arizona.

The eventual goal is 37 percent by 2016. Some vehicles still could pollute more as long as sufficient numbers of cars and trucks that exceed the reduction also are sold.

An economics expert hired by the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers has pegged the additional cost of the rules when fully in place at about $6,000. But the DEQ, relying on estimates from California, says prices will go up less than $1,100, an amount the agency says will be more than offset over the life of the vehicle because of greater fuel efficiency.

The rule also mandates that 11 percent of each manufacturer's vehicles sold in Arizona beginning in 2011 have no emissions at all, increasing to 16 percent by 2018.

Napolitano said the DEQ will monitor implementation of the rules so if problems develop they can be altered. "These adjustments will be better dealt with administratively as well,'' she wrote in her veto message.

The legislation would also have put a halt to separate efforts by the DEQ to enact restrictions on greenhouse-gas emissions by industrial sources, including the several coal-fired power plants in the state.

But Napolitano said those rules still are being formulated in cooperation with six other states and three Canadian provinces. Any recommendations will be based on public input, including from the "stakeholders" in the affected industries, she said.