Smog-Check Charges for Equipment Motors Cut

Smog-check fees for equipment motors used by a variety of small businesses in Southern California were slashed from as much as $10,224 each to a flat $150 Friday after a dozen businessmen told local air quality officials that the charges were bankrupting them.

“I pay about $25 for the smog check on my car,” Royal Foust, the operator of a small concrete-pumping firm in Lakewood, told the South Coast Air Quality Management District Board of Directors. “It would cost me more than $4,000 for the same sort of check on a smaller engine on one of my machines. Why the difference?”

Even the AQMD staff, which had set the higher fees last June to replace a special one-year discount rate for the small businesses, acknowledged that the charges were sometimes “way out of line” and “could create an undue hardship” for some businessmen.

Foust said it was more than a hardship.

“I have nine of those machines,” he said. “All told, it would have cost me more than $40,000. Cash. All at once. Not only would it have wiped me out, I couldn’t even have gotten anyone to buy the machines.”

AQMD spokesman Bill Kelly explained that the high fee structure was an outgrowth of the agency’s attempts to reduce emissions from large, industrial operations.

“As we clamped down on the emissions from large companies, we found there were still substantial emissions from smaller operations,” he said. “In June, 1988, the board changed the rules to require small businesses to get permits. We offered a one-year discount.”

Under the discount, most small businesses were charged a one-time application fee of $75, a one-time permit evaluation (smog-check and environmental-analysis) fee of $125 and an annual operating fee of $73 for each internal combustion engine not covered by Department of Motor Vehicles regulations.

But despite the fact that the permit-fee requirements were “well publicized,” Kelly said, about 8,000 businesses covered by the new rules never filed. Many operators--including Foust--say they never heard about it.

Last June, the board rescinded the discount and amended the rules, reinstating the same sort of fee structure for small businessmen that had applied to big industries.

The one-time application fees for each motor ranged between $160 and $250.

For motors up to five horsepower--the sort used for a lawn mower--the one-time permit evaluation fee was $174 and the annual operating permit fee $74.

For motors between 65 and 124 horsepower--the sort used by Foust--the evaluation fee was $4,267, the annual permit fee $503.

For motors of more than 400 horsepower--the kind used for big pumps and generators--the evaluation fee was $10,224, the annual permit fee $1,448.

“The first time I heard about it was when I saw it posted on the wall in someone’s shop,” Foust said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Kelly said the high fee structure, designed for big businesses, was meant for operations capable of polluting an entire neighborhood.

“When you have a 500-horsepower engine operating 24 hours a day, the carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons can violate the air standards in the whole area,” he said. “The fees were predicated on that sort of use.”

Foust said his use of much smaller motors was confined to a few hours each day.

“What you had was some brilliant people over there (at the AQMD),” Foust said, “people who have no idea what’s really happening outside the walls of that place.”

“We are not omniscient,” Kelly said. “We found a lot of instances where you don’t have to do the detailed engineering analyses (required for big industrial operations). Some of the fees were way out of line.”

Acknowledging this Friday, the AQMD staff presented the board with three options for reducing the fees for all businesses, two of which slashed the charges substantially.

The board, by a vote of 10 to 1, opted for an amended version of the least expensive option--a one-time application fee of $100, a one-time evaluation fee of $150 and an annual operating fee of $87, for any internal combustion engine of less than 500 horsepower. The lone “nay” vote came from board member Sabrina Schiller, who wanted a sliding scale of higher application fees.

Kelly said refund checks will be sent to several thousand businessmen who paid the higher fees, but stressed that only a relative few had been billed for--and made--”big overpayments.”

Foust had not paid the higher fees, so he will not get a refund.

But with the prospect of a vastly lower bill, he said he feels “a lot better now.”

“I’ll still have a warp on my wallet,” he said. “But I’ll find a way to pay it.”