Here's why smog rules aren't likely to be relaxed. This photo is a normal summer day in the State Capital, Sacramento. The Bay Area has pristine air because it blows in from the ocean - but by the time the air reaches the foothills 120 miles East it has absorbed all this crud and the Bay Area's smog just stacks up against the Sierras instead of blowing over into Nevada.
Los Angeles is worse. I used to fly down weekly for work and it hurt my lungs getting out of the plane just like when you use too much bleach cleaning the shower. Nobody in LA wants the sky to look like this, or likes it when their kids are kept in for recess because the atmosphere outdoors can give them lung cancer.
(Post where I explained that photo).