[I]f your car was made more than 10 years ago you soon may not have to worry about meeting emissions standards when your car is inspected — if a bill approved by the Senate Transportation Committee on Tuesday passes into law.
Senators on the committee have been discussing in recent weeks how they can spare lower income Vermonters from the costs of coming into line with federal emissions standards, which are now being enforced by computer systems that leave no room for human lenience.
Among the ideas were need-based waivers or subsidies to help pay for repairs.
“Regulatory wise, it was going to be difficult,” Sen. Andrew Perchlik, D/P-Washington and a member of the committee, said of those ideas. After looking at what other states are doing, the committee settled on a rolling exemption for all vehicles 10 years old or more.
“We were trying to deal with this in a simple way,” he said.
The bill was unanimously approved by the committee. It will now head to the Senate floor and then to the House.
It instructs Motor Vehicles Commissioner Wanda Minoli to file a new rules on vehicle inspections “with the effect that no motor vehicle that is more than 10 model years old will be required to undergo an emissions or on board diagnostic (OBD) systems inspection.”
Under existing rules, people whose cars fail emissions tests can apply for a one-year exemption if the necessary repairs cost $200 or more. The Department of Motor Vehicles announced earlier this year that it would stop issuing “conditional passes” for cars that fail emissions tests.
The bill would require the DMV to update its inspection systems or come up with another workaround within 30 days of the bill passing to make sure that people with exempt cars aren’t required to pass emissions tests.
In the past two years, about 59,000 vehicles a year have received “conditional passes” after failing to pass the emissions tests. Perchlik said he was seeking data on what percentage of those vehicles — or all vehicles in Vermont — are 10 years old or more.
Beginning in 2017, cars that were found to be safe but not meeting emissions standards were given a “conditional pass” allowing them to stay on the road. From January 2017 to November 2018, the DMV said 117,709 conditional passes were issued — about 59,000 a year.
Vermont is in the process of having its inspection system approved by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
Vermont’s Department of Environmental Conservation, which is tasked with making sure the state meets its obligations under the federal Clean Air Act, expressed uncertainty about how the 10-year exemption would impact that federal review, Perchlik said.
Potential penalties include losing federal highway funding, but senators were skeptical that the Trump administration would come down hard on states over emissions when it was rolling back standards.
Perchlik said the committee was prepared to revisit the new rules if they turned out to be problematic.
“In the meantime, we provided relief to Vermonters who weren’t able to have a vehicle,” he said.
