Lawmakers push to eliminate E-Check in Northeast Ohio

If your car is older than four years, you’ve most likely had to get an E-Check performed to renew your vehicle registration every other year.

Lawmakers, led by state representative Bill Roemer, want to eliminate the E-Check in Northeast Ohio, which has been in effect since 1996. 

The program was created to reduce harmful pollutants to humans and the environment.

E-Checks are required in seven of the 88 counties throughout Ohio.

They include Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina, Portage and Summit.

“The program is inefficient and costs the state over $11 million a year,” Roemer said. “As cars have gotten more efficient, the benefit of it has declined markedly. 

This is also something that discriminates against the counties in Northeast Ohio.”

The elimination of coal plants and the decline in industry and steel mills is one reason Roemer thinks the program can be insufficient and can target the “working poor more heavily.”

“Who’s more likely to have an older car that might fail an E-Check,” he said. “Is it going to be the doctor in Fairlawn, or is it going to be somebody that’s working at Target store in Ravenna who’s earning just above minimum wage.”

According to Choice Plus, the e-check program removes more than 74 tons of harmful vehicle emissions from the region’s air daily – helping improve air quality, protect public health, safeguard the environment and support economic growth.

With Roemer wanting to eliminate the program, Choice Plus says doing this would be the equivalent of adding 400,000 cars to the roadway or 15 new factories.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency established metrics Northeast Ohio must meet when the E-Check program was constructed, and in 2015, Roemer said they meet those standards; however, the EPA decided to change the requirements to make it harder to achieve. 

“It’s kind of like saying if you move the ball, 100 yards down the field and you get a touchdown,” Roemer said. “Then coming back and saying, you would have a touchdown. But guess what, now you have to get an extra 10 yards. 

So, not only have we met all the quality metrics that were originally established, but I just don’t see how it is beneficial.”

Three items consistently come to Roemer’s office: unemployment, property taxes, and E-Check.

“People are always asking, tell me when you can get rid of this. I’m tired of my family being penalized by this,” he said. People having to take their car and have to spend hundreds of dollars, and returning to get their cars checked multiple times.”

Citizens in the affected counties understand its original purpose, but Thomas J. of Summit County doesn’t see why it is something that is still implemented. 

“It’s just something that is an annoyance to have done,” he said. “I just feel cars today are more efficient to the world than 25 years ago. 

“Especially when it’s just a portion of our state that is required to do this and not other areas of the state that possibly create just as much if not more pollution.”

The Ohio EPA’s response to Roemer wanting to eliminate E-Check was that “in order for Ohio to be considered meeting its clean air goals, E-Check has to remain in place.”

However, Roemer argues that the program should be moved to central Ohio.

“Using a Swedish firm that monitors air quality across America, I was able to find the Columbus has the dirtiest air in the country for particular matter,” he said.

The Ohio EPA’s response to Roemer was they contacted the company, but the company refused to provide any data to them.

After being unable to eliminate the program, Roemer proposed moving the first-time tests for cars from four years old to six years.

“When the program first started, we had cars without electronic ignition, without catalytic converters, without all of the technology that we have now to mitigate the amount of air pollution,” he said. “There’s no demonstrable difference between a four and a six year old car on the road, as far as the amount of pollution is being produced.”

However, the bill was rejected out of hand.

There has been very little pushback from the statehouse, Romer said.

“This is a US EPA issue,” he said. “There has been basically zero opposition testimony with this resolution because this involves asking the EPA to do something.”

One reason Roemer believes the EPA has yet to make changes is because they don’t get calls consistently from people affected by having to go and do the tests. 

“I recently had a lady from Norton in tears because she couldn’t get her car to pass,” he said. “We as legislators need to look at what’s best overall for our constituents.

“When you’ve got a program that negatively impacts the working poor most. That’s something I have to work to get rid of. And the USEPA doesn’t necessarily consider all of those things.”

For citizens in the affected counties, Roemer says reaching out to individuals in Congress can help get E-Check on the way out since it is a federal decision.

“So it’d be reaching out to those individual congressional offices, and from a senatorial perspective,” he said. “To say that this is something that we believe unfairly targets the poor, is unnecessary and is overly expensive.”