Bill signed by Owens to phase out car tests

Roadside monitors will do more checks after law takes effect

April M. Washington, Rocky Mountain News

Friday, May 26, 2006

For most Colorado drivers, those dreaded trips to the car-emissions testing station will become history over the next several years under a bill Gov. Bill Owens signed into law Thursday.

House Bill 1302, which eventually will replace the time-consuming tailpipe tests with another program, was among three dozen measures OK'd by the governor.

He also signed a bill that would allow teens convicted of murder to become eligible for parole after serving 40 years in prison, and another designed to bail out the state employee pension fund.

Owens made a case in his State of State address at the start of the 2006 legislative session that Colorado's mandatory emission testing program had outlived its usefulness, said Dan Hopkins, spokesman for Owens.

"Tailpipe testing at fixed locations is no longer necessary and costs drivers $26 million annually," Hopkins said. "Expansion of remote sensing is one step toward ending the old outdated program."

Remote sensing is done by vans parked along roadsides that take emissions readings from cars as they pass by. The new law requires that most emissions testing be done with RapidScreen roadside monitors.

Right now, Envirotest has only six vans administering roadside tests.

But even though the law becomes effective July 1, motorists should not expect to see Envirotest stations disappear overnight.

Officials cannot say when there will be enough remote roadside testing vans to accommodate the 1.7 million cars in the metro area required to be tested every two years.

The bill by Rep. Joe Stengel, R-Littleton, and Sen. Ken Gordon, D-Denver, calls for sending cars to a testing site only after multiple "dirty" readings by roadside monitors.

It's not clear, however, if such a system is ready for prime time.

A state program implemented in 2004, which promised to dramatically scale back the need for the unpopular car-emissions test, has fallen far short of expectations, capable of processing only 8 percent of the region's cars.

Currently, RapidScreen is clearing about 3,200 vehicles a month.

An additional 600,000-plus vehicles that are less than 4 years old are allowed to forgo the test.

HB 1302 is designed to push Envirotest, which has the rights to the remote-sensing technology as well as to the tailpipe tests, to expand the number of remote roadside sensing locations while cutting back the number of fixed emission testing sites.

Under the new law, the biennial $25 testing fee would be done away with. Instead, the annual vehicle registration fee would be increased by up to $9 a year. The Air Quality Control Commission would be authorized to reduce this fee as capital costs decrease.

Meanwhile, a number of the 36 bills Owens signed into law Thursday drew praise, including a measure that will give juveniles who commit murder a chance to gain parole after serving 40 years in prison.

Giving teens convicted of murder a second shot in life has been a passion of the bill's sponsor, Rep. Lynn Hefley, R-Colorado Springs, for years.

In order to get her bill through the legislature, though, she had to give up the provision that would have allowed 45 juveniles already serving life sentences to qualify for parole after 40 years.

"The supporters of this bill made a very compelling argument," Owens said. "While I remain opposed to applying such legislation retroactively, I believe the evidence supports this approach moving forward."

Owens also signed and sealed a deal reached earlier this month aimed at shoring up the Public Employees Retirement Association fund, which faced an $11.3 billion shortfall.

About 370,000 PERA members and retirees rely on the pension plan as their main source of retirement income.

Under Senate Bill 235, by Sen. Paula Sandoval and Rep. Rosemary Marshall, both Denver Democrats, employees will give up 3 percent of their cost-of-living raises over the next six years, and future PERA members must work five more years before becoming eligible for retirement.

"PERA reform was the most important outcome of this year's legislative session," Owens said. "We avoided a bailout at the expense of the taxpayers and put PERA on the road to solvency."

Other bills signed into law:

• HB 1086 allows bingo halls to raise their purses to better compete with casinos.

Since casinos opened in Colorado, bingo halls have seen profits drop to $170 million from $230 million. The number of bingo players has decreased from 3.4 million in 2002 to 1.7 million in 2005.

• HB 1388 allows the executive director of the Department of Revenue to address alleged violations relating to auto dealers.

• HB 1153 requires convicted sex offenders who live in cars, trailers and mobile homes to provide vehicle identification numbers, license plates and auto registration information to law enforcement when registering as sex offenders.

• SB 127 creates a pilot program to make free fruits and vegetables available in a handful of public schools. The new law calls for the Colorado Department of Education to raise $500,000 through grants and donations to fund it.

• SB 45 requires the state to conduct fingerprint and criminal history background checks on in-home day-care providers who contract with the state.