A new month is about to appear on the calendar, which is an opportunity to remind ourselves that even if your birthday is coming up, you don’t need to call a mechanic about your car inspection.
Legally, the state inspection brouhaha remains up in the air, but it has been decided for practical purposes, at least for now. The New Hampshire Department of Justice has said it will proceed just as if the state’s new law ending inspections had gone into effect smoothly, making 2026 inspections unnecessary.
What happens if federal courts throw out the law ending inspections or say that it is unenforceable until the EPA gives the thumbs-up? That remains unclear.
New Hampshire seems to be hedging its bets by asking vendors to bid to develop and run a vehicle inspection system for the state, just in case the program needs to be started up again quickly.
However, its Request for Proposals on this matter filed March 20 says up front that it “shall not constitute any waiver or admission related to the above-mentioned litigation” filed by the former vendor of the system, Gordon-Darby Inc.
“The RFP was issued to comply with the court’s order while litigation and federal review are ongoing. It preserves flexibility and the state may delay, modify, or cancel the process depending on how matters are resolved,” Department of Justice spokesman Michael Garrity said.
In other words, the state assumes it won’t ever have to actually execute any contract. Bids are due by May 1.
Last summer, the governor signed a law ending inspections as of Jan. 31, but the state didn’t apply for a required waiver from the EPA until December. The waiver is needed because the federal Clean Air Act requires emissions inspections.
Gordon-Darby Inc. sued, saying that until EPA grants a Clean Air Act waiver, the inspections must continue. A federal judge agreed and told the state not to implement the new law, but New Hampshire went ahead with it anyway, ending inspections, and the legal situation has been ongoing.
New Hampshire has been vigorous in its push back on Gordon-Darby’s challenge, calling it a backhanded way to make more money.
“The speculative hope seems to have been that a judicially-forced continuation of the state program would require New Hampshire to renew its contract with (Gordon-Darby’s) subsidiary thereby redressing (its) private economic harm. That hope has not, and likely will never, come to pass,” Attorney General John Formella wrote in a March 19 appeal to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, which has not yet passed judgment.
The EPA said it plans to rule on New Hampshire’s waiver request before the end of the year, which is faster than normal, but this still leaves us with many more months of inspection uncertainty.
It’s important to note that while annual inspections are dead, you can still get ticketed if your vehicle has the sort of problem that made it fail, such as a cracked windshield or dead lights. And here in the land of winter road salt, where rust eats cars, it makes sense to get your mechanic to check things out occasionally, even without a legal requirement.
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