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Push to End Emissions Testing
There’s a push from the Wisconsin Capitol to end emissions testing in the state.
A number of Republican lawmakers this week wrote to the state’s congressional delegation, asking that they end the portion of the Clean Air Act that requires drivers in southeast Wisconsin get their cars and trucks tested each year.
“The vehicle inspection and maintenance program is no longer useful due to the economic burdens on citizens and technological advancements reducing the need for testing. If successful, this would allow Wisconsin to end this regulatory burden that has been enacted since 1984 on seven southeastern counties,” lawmakers wrote in their letter.
State Rep. Bob Donovan, R-Greenfield, said he wants clean air as much as the next person. But he said the emissions testing law simply doesn't work.
"But if a program can't even prove after 40 years that it's made a difference, that concerns me. And we all breathe the same air, yet if you live across the street from a county in this program, well, you don't have to partake in it. So, to me, it's negligible what we gain from this. That's why I think it's important the federal government reevaluate it," Donovan said.
Currently only people who live in Kenosha, Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Racine, Sheboygan, Washington and Waukesha counties, and drive cars and trucks made after 1996 have to get an emissions test.
And very few of them fail.
"In 2021 and 2022, only 3.1% and 3% of all vehicles tested failed inspection. When broken down by categories, we see the technological advancements more clearly. In 2021, failure rates were 8.2% for 1996-2009 models; 1.6% for 2010-2019 models; and below 1% for 2016-2019 models," the lawmakers wrote.
Donovan says he's talked to congressmen Bryan Steil and Tom Tiffany, to see what kind of help thy can provide on Capitol Hill.
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