Jerald Leishman of Tom’s Service in Wellsville demonstrates how the equipment he uses to check emissions on Saturday March, 9 2024.
BRIGHAM CITY – Some Utahns have figured out how to skirt the mandatory emissions requirements for their vehicles. There is evidence residents from outside of Box Elder County are registering their cars there to avoid having the emission test done every two years.
A recent audit was performed by the Utah Department of Motor Vehicles and presented to Box Elder County Commissioners. The auditors estimated the county is losing almost $190,000 a year from emission dodgers.
In Utah, the law requires all licensed Utah auto dealers to assure vehicles they sell to residents of Cache, Davis, Salt Lake, Utah, or Weber counties meet emission testing requirements prior to issuing a temporary permit.
“People come in to register their cars and some give false addresses,” said Shirlene Larsen, the Box Elder County auditor. “By law we can’t ask people to verify where they live, and we can’t look them up to check if they are being truthful or not.”
The audit team consisted of Josh Capell and Nate Adams from the auditors office, looking at the county’s number of registrations and census data. They estimated there were some 14,000 registrations over where the auditing thought they should have been.
Using the estimates the county leaders figured 18 percent of the vehicles registered in Box Elder County were from outside of the county.
During a meeting with Box Elder County’s management and State DMV, officers discussed the cost of DMV to county and issues with registration fraud, and processing reimbursements. The state has agreed to review reimbursement rate for DMV transactions and release it sometime in 2024.
Idaho also does not do emissions testing, but it is harder to register a vehicle from out of state.
Rhonda Gregerson from the Franklin County DMV said they do a lot of registrations for people who’s primary residents are in Utah.
“If they have a viable Idaho address and they have proof they are living here, they need a utility bill with a name and address and a picture ID,” she said. “There are quite a few people that register there cars here especially farmers who have land here and register their vehicles in Idaho.”
Cache County adopted the Vehicle Emissions and Maintenance Program signed by Bear River Board of Health director Lloyd Berentzen and Cache County Attorney at the time James Swink on May 9, 2013. It was updated a couple of times since then.