Article by Erik Smith. Published on Tuesday, February 07, 2012 EST.
Flunk the Test, Pay $150 to a Repair Shop, Get a Waiver – But it Doesn’t Mean Your Car is Fixed
Kastama, armed with one of his ubiquitous Powerpoints, shows how a change to the waiver program might divert as much as $26 million to deal with air-quality problems.
By Erik Smith
Staff writer/ Washington State Wire
OLYMPIA, Feb. 7.—State Sen. Jim Kastama is pushing a bill that points out a tiny little flaw in the state’s car-emissions testing program. It’s supposed to combat air pollution in some of the state’s most populous counties, but no one can prove that it makes the air any cleaner. And the way the rules work, it seems a good bet that it doesn’t.
Suppose you live in King, Pierce, or Spokane counties, or one of the other areas where you have to get an emissions test in order to relicense your car.
Suppose your car flunks.
You can get a waiver from the testing requirement if you show a $150 repair bill. But here’s the thing. The repair bill doesn’t mean that your car is actually fixed. The way things actually work, you’ll probably spend $150 just to find out what’s wrong with it. And once you find out, that’s good enough for government work. You can just keep on driving.
That’s what Kastama did when his 2000 Toyota Avalon failed the test in Pierce County. The Puyallup Democrat still doesn’t know what’s the matter with the thing. He just knows that one shop gave him an $850 estimate to fix it, and he wasn’t about to spend that much on a 12-year-old car. But since he spent $170 for diagnosis charges, that was enough to make the state happy. He presented the receipt, got his waiver and picked up a new sticker for his license plate, and he’s motored on. And he’s sure he’s not the only one who has played it that way. “It’s for the most part a rational response on the part of people,” he says.
Kastama isn’t proposing that he and everyone else be required to fix their cars, an expense that might sometimes be more than a car is worth. But he thinks there might have been a better way for him to spend that money. Senate Bill 6539 would allow car owners who flunk the test to deposit their $150 instead into an account that provides assistance to low-income homeowners who wish to replace their wood-burning stoves. It might raise as much as $26 million over seven years, he says, and certainly it would do more to combat air pollution than the current waiver program.
“I know no one has the money to address this issue, and yet in Pierce County it is very important,” he says. Air-pollution regulations might well shut down industry in the Puyallup Valley, he says, and cars aren’t the problem – it’s wood-burning stoves.
Regulations Don’t Address Real Problem
Kastama’s beef points out that sometimes government programs put their emphasis in the wrong place, and can’t show that they’re actually doing any good. Regulators acknowledge that cars have become significantly cleaner over the years — in 2005, Washington and Oregon adopted stringent California emissions standards. As older cars eventually are shuffled off to the junkyard, their share of the air pollution problem continues to decline. The Legislature already has adopted a plan to phase out the emissions testing program by 2019. The way things stand today, Craig Kenworthy, executive director of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, says gasoline vehicles emit about 20 percent of the air pollutants in Pierce County, and wood stoves emit about 50 percent.
Meantime, there’s no evidence that the emissions-testing program provides much of a benefit, because the state doesn’t track results to see how many motorists actually fix their cars. Yet changing the rules strikes regulators as a bit radical. “This bill offers an off-ramp to those who fail their auto test, by simply purchasing a waiver from fixing their car,” complained Marshall Taylor, director of the Department of Ecology’s air quality program, at a hearing last week of the Senate Environment Committee.
Main problem is that’s sort of how things work already.
Diagnosis Alone Satisfies State Requirement
That’s the striking thing about Kastama’s experience. The first place he went, before he got the official test, was Walt’s Radiator in Puyallup. They tested his car for free, told him he flunked, and then gave him the heart-stopping $850 estimate.
He gulped and said thanks but no thanks. Then he took his car to the official state-managed testing station, where he paid $15 for the test – a fee that is set in state law. The computerized testing device said his car flunked, too.
So then he started getting estimates from mechanics on the list of state-approved emissions-repair shops. One place wanted $99 for a diagnosis. One place wanted $129. One wanted $149.
Kastama went to the place that charged $149, because it was closest to his home; additional testing brought the charge to $170. Sure enough, he flunked again. But he didn’t bother getting an estimate. He knew the law.
Diagnosis charges by themselves are enough to put the average car owner close, if not beyond, the $150 level. Washington State Wire called three shops on the Pierce-County approved list. One wanted $59.95 for a basic emissions diagnosis, one charged $90, and one charged $92.39 an hour. All pointed out that it wasn’t necessary to pass the test; all that needed to be done was to spend $150 toward that goal. You don’t have to pass the test, one explained. “You just have to spend $150 trying to make it pass.”
State Doesn’t Track
Right now about 1 million cars a year are tested each year in Washington state, those between 5 and 25 years old, and about 10 percent of them fail. Of those 100,000 cars, no one knows exactly what happens to about 80,000 of them. They don’t come back through the system. Maybe they are sold out-of-county, or maybe the owner puts them up on blocks. But 20,000 owners show their $150 repair tickets and get waivers.
It’s possible that owners just pay testing charges and call it good, Taylor said, “but they aren’t supposed to do that.”
Well, that’s what Kastama did.
His bill originally would have allowed all who flunk to avoid the fuss and pay their $150 fee on the spot at the state testing station. Their money would be deposited in an “air-pollution offset account,” and local governments would have been required to put up a 25 percent match. That would generate as much as $3.75 million a year. The Senate Environment Committee adopted an amendment Friday that limits the option to those with cars 20 years old or older, meaning that it would apply to about 18,000 cars a year.
Regulators are quick to point out that the waiver program was approved by the Legislature. So its problems, in a sense, began at the statehouse. But they say that a change like the one Kastama proposes could get the state in hot water with the federal Enviromental Protection Agency, which mandated and approved the state program in the first place.
Meanwhile, some lawmakers say they wonder why regulators continue to defend a program when they can’t prove it makes a whit of difference. Asked state Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, “Wouldn’t it be better to capture those dollars and put them into an area that actually reduces emissions?”
Your support matters.
Public service journalism is important today as ever. If you get something from our coverage, please consider making a donation to support our work. Thanks for reading our stuff.
