Driving Up the Price of Driving a Car

The rhetoric was often crude (“Kiss my gas!”), the accusations overblown (“First you came for our guns, now you come for our cars!”). But by the time the Sacramento rally in opposition to California’s new automobile emission standards (“Smog Check II”) was over and the supporters of the law had held their own press conference, one thing was clear: Keeping a car on the road is going to become more expensive.

The new California law, mandated by amendments to the Clean Air Act signed by President George Bush, took effect in June. The details are complex, with different standards in different parts of the state. Ironically, the revolt was organized by two radio stations in San Francisco, where the new standards will not be much stricter than the current ones. It is the areas like Los Angeles and Orange counties, which have not met federal standards, that will be hit the hardest.

The falsity of some charges over the airwaves has allowed state officials to denigrate the whole campaign as a tissue of absurdities. Gary Patton, lobbyist for the Planning and Conservation League, said at the Sacramento press conference that “the basic charge--that somehow there’s a conspiracy to take over your car and ride roughshod over your constitutional rights, just isn’t true.” The charge that the new law “is a sinister plot to confiscate people’s cars” was also gleefully denied.

Sinister plot? Conspiracy? That isn’t the charge at all. The new law was openly debated by the Legislature, promulgated in public places, signed into law by Pete Wilson. But it is also so complex and obscure that it came as a surprise to most.

An aide to state Sen. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), a supporter of the law, ridiculed the idea that “black helicopters are going to land in their yards and take away their old Chevrolet.” But more cars are going to fail. And unregistered cars cannot be driven legally and if left on public streets, they can be hauled away by public agencies, if not by black helicopters.

How many more cars will fail? The Department of Consumer Affairs issued a list of “errors and facts” about Smog Check II. It denies that “60% of vehicles will fail the test,” but adds this unreassuring “fact”: “No more than about 30% are expected to fail the test, and only half of those cars . . . are expected to be found to have such high emissions that they are classified as ‘gross polluters.’J”

I won’t describe the bureaucratic bog into which gross polluters will fall. Suffice it to say that owners should have their cars prechecked to find out if they are in danger of being so classified. With 24 million automobiles in the state, 7.2 million may fail every two years. Martin Keller, chief of the state Bureau of Automotive Repair, told me that the number he’d seen for the failure rate under the old standards was 15%.

If the failure rate does double, the auto repair business should flourish. It was not reassuring to note that the speakers at the Sacramento press conference were introduced by the executive director for the California Auto Service Station and Repair Assn. After he praised Smog Check II as a “workable program,” I asked if his association would benefit from the new law. He replied that they should do fine. By how much? He thought that repair costs of keeping cars in compliance should double.

What this tells us is that the cost of keeping old cars on the road is going to increase, at a time of rising demand for used cars. It’s the migrant workers in their rusted Datsuns, the laborers in their old Buicks who will bear the brunt. The policy elites who disdain the American “love affair with the automobile” won’t have trouble keeping in compliance; the cost of a tuneup is no problem for new car owners. The “correct” if unstated position seems to be that if the hoi polloi are forced into mass transit, so much the better for us all.

As the liberals like to remind us in other contexts--budget cuts, for example--Smog Check II will hit the poor hardest. But in this case, those of the progressive persuasion have remained uncharacteristically silent about its economic impact. And that’s the beauty of environmentalism. Where necessary, it trumps egalitarianism.