Critics say Dem emissions-testing bill spreads metro Denver's misery to Larimer, Weld

Republicans fought back today at an attempt to expand the metropolitan-Denver area's much-unloved automotive emissions-testing program into northern Colorado's populations centers, but ruling Senate Democrats waved off concerns and OK'd the proposal anyway.

In floor debate on Senate Bill 3, northern Front Range Republican senators said the measure not only poses a tremendous new burden on motorists in places like Greeley and Fort Collins but also is flat-out unwarranted. They said those climes are by and large alraedy in compliance with federal air-quality standards.

Sponsored by Fort Collins Democrats Bob Bacon in the Senate and Randy Fischer in the House, SB 3 expands the so-called "enhanced emissions program"--now consisting of the counties that make up the Denver metro area--to include Larimer and Weld counties. The upshot, the Republicans point out, will be to impose costly and time-consuming Denver-style emissions testing on vehicle owners by 2011 in those northern counties.

"This issue has been flying under the radar here in the General Assembly, but there will be an uproar in my community when this thing hits home," said Greeley Republican Sen. Scott Renfroe, who pushed back hard at the measure in today's debate and tried unsuccessfully to amend it.

Another critic, the GOP's Sen. Kevin Lundberg, of Berthoud in Larimer County, said what's at issue isn't whether northern Coloradans want clean air but rather whether the drastic step of expanding the Denver area's unpopular and unwieldy program makes sense. Lundberg says not only are the two northern counties largely compliant with standards for emissions of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons, but so are most cars and trucks everywhere in the state--meaning that testing regimes like the one in force in Denver amount to overkill.

Denver's program long has raised the ire of motorists who have to pay a fee and at times have had to wait hours at one of a few officially designated testing locations--only to be told in the vast majority of cases that their vehicles pass. Air-quality experts long have said that a small percentage of all cars and trucks on the road--typically the oldest that are in poor repair--are disproportionately responsible for air pollution.

Requiring all cars to undergo a test that all but a few will pass is like taking a sledgehammer to kill a gnat, the Republicans say.

"If the old Soviet Union had cared about air quality, its program would have been run like the one in Denver," quipped Lundberg. "Long lines, few locations, one-size-fits-all--and all to catch a handful of offenders."

The Republican senators say the bill may be an abstraction to a lot of the public right now, but that is the calm before the storm.

Another provision that may irritate the public, the Republicans say, is that the bill changes the definition of collector's item for the purposes of motor vehicle registration and emission testing to a model year 1975 or earlier, or a vehicle that was registered as a collector's item prior to September 1, 2009. Under current law, vehicles that are at east 25 years old may be considered a collector's item. That means a lot of the kinds of cars currently eligible for collectors plates and exempt from testing--including some bona fide classics--won't be exampt any longer.