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Re: Smog/Emissions Bills

To: tigers@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: Smog/Emissions Bills
From: "Robert L. Norton" <rlnorton@alumni.caltech.edu>
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 14:47:44 -0700 (PDT)
***** NOTES from Jay Laifman (JLAIFMAN @ PNM) at 7/31/96 4:11p
I checked each of the refenced bills.  AB 2018 addresses absent voters
ballots, SB 621 addresses public utilities and power lines, SB 1195
addresses entry of judgment.  Maybe the numbers Don found are from
previous sessions.

SB 63, however, deals with air polution: "This bill would require the
Department of Consumer Affairs to develop and implement either the Repair
Subsidy Program or a program that would provide for a 12 month economic
hardship extension for vehicles from biennial certificate of compliance
requirement under special circumstances.  This bill contains other related
provisions."

It was signed into law at the end of 1995.  I have ordered a copy to see
what the "other related provisions" are.  I could not find any other new
bills (new since August of 1995) that address smog rules.  There could be
other bills pending that have not had any action since August.  I will see
what I can find out.

Jay Laifman

*****************

Jay, I'm surprised at you!  Just point your web browser to
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov and you can get the full legislative
history as well as the exact text of the bills (both in ASCII
and Adobe Acrobat).

You can also do a keyword search on bills in progress or recently
passed.  Like you, I struck out on three of the four posted
references, and the fourth was inacurate in that it is AB, not
SB 63.  Another one of interest is SB 501.  These two have already
been signed into law by the governor (October 14 & 16, 1995) and
both ammend the Health and Safety Code (also available online via
the site listed above).

The bad news is that they are tightening the inspection procedures
starting next year to have a road dynomometer test (this has been
scheduled for some time).  These two bills don't change that.
I don't know what the impact of the new "test-only" stations will
be.  I think that they are trying to get away from the current
procedures where the testing station also does the repair work,
which has certain flaws.  Unfortunately, this may mean that my
inspector/mechanic won't be able to do the minimal retuning required
for my Tiger to pass.  This may involve more than one trip to the
"test-only" station.  We'll see...

The good news is that the existing statuory requirements that the
test standards cannot be more stringent than the standards used
when the car was built has not changed (Vehicle Code Section 27157,
also repeated in the Health and Safety Code Section 44013).
Yes, yes, I know my 1967 Tiger wasn't built to any tailpipe 
emissions standard, and the State lumps 1966-1967 imports (with
no tailpipe emissions requirements) in with domestics (which had
air pumps and other devices), but so far that hasn't been a real
problem.

So far, I am reasonably hopeful.  Even when the State pushes the
early retirement program for cars (i.e. the junker program to
crush older cars) it states in the Health and Safety Code Section
44100 that "the program design should be sensitive to the concerns
of car collectors and to consumers for whom older vehicles provide
affordable transportation."  Perhaps that attitude is just a 
California thing -- I've certainly heard many bad things about NJ
laws!

By all means, lets stay on top of the bills and laws, but let's
not adopt a Chicken Little attitude.  We really shouldn't promote
the use of older, higher-polluting vehicles for people who really
crank on the miles.  I'd much rather have people drive their
30-50K miles/year on newer cars rather than 1960s vintage vehicles;
after all I breath this air too.  For us who are considered to be
in the collector mode (even if I have only one), I don't
drive more than around 2,000 miles a year now (for insurance
purposes as well as practicality), and hopefully the State will
not consider that to be worth going after.

Bob Norton
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Bob Norton

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