"We have known for at least 20 years that these inspection programs do not work particularly well," Schwartz said. "The evidence has been overwhelming that they are failing to repair the high-polluting cars. There is fraud. And yet they have been popular with regulators and activists."
The smog-check program has been plagued by fraud since its inception in 1984. In the last decade, state investigations have uncovered dozens of private smog-check stations engaged in "clean piping," a practice in which emissions from a cleaner vehicle are illegally used to substitute for one that could not pass the inspections. In many cases, investigators have found that smog station technicians charged extra money on the side without the knowledge of a shop's owners.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday August 18, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 Foreign Desk 2 inches; 89 words Type of Material: Correction
Smog checks -- An article in Sunday's Section A said "cars built in 1976 or before are exempt" from the state's smog-check program. That is no longer true under a state law that took effect April 1. Vehicles built in 1976 that were registered before April 1 did not have to get a smog check this year but will have to in the future. Vehicles built in 1976 and registered after April 1 have to get a smog check. Vehicles from the 1975 model year and earlier are exempt.
Outside reviews of the program, conducted by pulling over motorists after they have received smog checks, have also found evidence of what critics call the "clean for a day" problem: cars that have been rigged by technicians to get through the test, only to fall back into disrepair within days.
"There is a lot of suspicion that the repairs being done" on cars and trucks that fail the smog checks "are not lasting," said Dean Saito, the official in charge of the planned Southern California monitoring program.
That's what Douglas R. Lawson, a former scientist with the California Air Resources Board, discovered to his surprise a decade ago.
In 1995, Lawson used sensors to detect high polluters in Orange County and then radioed California Highway Patrol officers to pull over the vehicles and administer smog tests on the spot. More than 90% failed, including many that had recently passed the smog check.
The smog-check program has been reworked numerous times, but large-scale changes have proved politically difficult, in part because the 8,000 private smog-testing stations in the state have become political players in their own right, with lobbying coalitions in Sacramento.
Last year, groups representing smog stations opposed a proposal to grant longer new-car exemptions from inspections, arguing that it would harm their businesses. The proposal involved raising smog-check fees and ultimately provided the money to help fund the new remote-sensing proposal.
Citing smog check's underperformance, Schwartz and other critics argue that the state should scrap the program or at least limit it to older cars and instead install a vast web of remote sensors to snare problem vehicles.
