CALIFORNIA COMMENTARIES : Keep ‘Big Sister’ Off Our Backs : When government does the testing, it’s a motorist’s nightmare.

The Clinton Administration is taking hostages--31 million to be exact. The Administration is threatening to withhold perhaps $700 million, or 40%, of federal funds allocated for California’s highway construction program. The reason?

The Environmental Protection Agency insists that California transform its system of private, decentralized smog-check stations into a system that is public and centralized. As someone who emigrated from British Columbia to California, I find this situation a perfect fit for the Yogi Berra maxim: “It’s deja vu all over again.”

Canada’s westernmost province is much bigger than California, but has only about one-tenth California’s population. Yet in recent years, British Columbia has had an annual total fiscal deficit only slightly lower than California’s. Government simply plays a much bigger part in the lives of British Columbians than it does in the lives of Californians.

When the first socialist provincial government was elected in 1972, Barron’s magazine referred to British Columbia as “the Chile of the North.” The New Democratic Party government made a point of “rescuing” bankrupt companies on the verge of collapse--a tremendous drain on the treasury.

In the 1960s, I lived in Vancouver, a city of 350,000 that had only one automobile-testing station, in the heart of a very busy downtown. The station was open only Monday to Friday. The public-sector inspectors simply did not need to accommodate our private-sector work schedules.

I often accompanied my mother on her semi-annual trek to the station, battling traffic jams into the heart of town only to have to wait in line for hours. The inspectors moved with a stately snail’s pace--unlike the gas jockeys at our local garage, who ran from car to car, speeding up if a line of cars appeared.

And why did we queue forever? All for the privilege of having someone evaluate our car’s tailpipe, horn, brakes and brake lights. If the inspector identified a problem, he slapped a red “reject” sticker on your windshield.

After rejection, what? You wound your way home, frustrated and exhausted, to book an appointment at your local service station or dealer to have the problem repaired. Then you returned downtown and joined the queue again.

This is the kind of day Vancouver remembers; the kind of day the federal EPA now wants to inflict on every Californian who drives.

When citizens of British Columbia rebelled by electing the conservative Social Credit government, privatization, decentralization and downsizing became the new order of the day. One victim of this new downsizing program was the provincial Department of Motor Vehicles’ testing stations.

The conservative government had a solid rationale for closing the stations. It chose to return responsibility for servicing cars to the people who own them, near their homes or offices.

A new socialist NDP government decided to reintroduce public motor-vehicle testing in 1992, this time with stringent emissions standards. But even these socialists realized that it was not in their best interest to expand the size of government. Studies show that government-run services are between 50% and 250% more expensive than service provided by the private sector. So this new testing is being done at local service stations.

EPA officials would do well to heed the experience of British Columbia. The EPA claims its system will crack down on fraud and focus on the dirtiest 10% of cars that account for 60% of the state’s tailpipe emissions. The system of local stations, it is claimed, relies on faulty procedures and outdated equipment.

Why not ask California’s 9,600 independent stations to update, upgrade and meet the new federal requirements? It would be a lot cheaper for taxpayers if smog checking and repairs remained in the private sector, where the infrastructure is already in place. The alternative is for the government to crush the substantial investment in plant and equipment made by thousands of owners of small service stations.

Privatization is sweeping the world, from Moscow to Mexico City, from Prague to Sydney. Just as the world is turning to smaller, private and cheaper, the EPA wants to make life in California more centralized, public and expensive. We don’t need “deja vu all over again.” We need to tell Washington that enough is enough.