What the Dem Party doesn’t understand about poor people hating the government and regulations and becoming Republicans

I’m a Democrat. I’m a fan of many regulations and government programs. I’m a fan of the EPA and even the smog requirement on vehicles, which is why when you read my indictment of the CA smog inspection process below, you should understand that this is coming from a person who wishes it was illegal to smoke cigarettes in public, not a person who wants to dump trash in the ocean.

The issue is not often the regulation itself. It is the process required to abide by that regulation. It is the impact it has on those of little means vs those of much. It is the complete lack of care from those enforcing these regulations as to the burden on an individual or whether it is even possible to abide by the regulation at all.

My story starts in May of 2016 when I received my CA registration renewal from the DMV. $99 might not seem like a lot to a Senator making a six figure salary in Sacramento, but for me, an entrepreneur earning nothing and paying San Francisco rent, that’s lunch for two weeks. I can’t imagine what it is to a single parent household earning minimum wage and trying to feed a family of four. If only it were as simple as paying $99 (as I have in the past), it would hurt, but it would at least seem fair. Before paying your registration fee, you must get your car “smogged”. Every two years in CA you must have the emissions checked to ensure you are not polluting the environment more than allowed.

I took my car, a 2003 Toyota Corolla, to a STAR certified inspection station where I had to pay another $50 for a 5 minute inspection. Guess what? My car failed. It didn’t exactly fail. It wasn’t ready. The on-board diagnostics or OBD II System (that’s what the technicians connect to when the plug a little device in below your steering wheel — it constantly collects data on how the car runs and reports any problems, usually also illuminating that “check engine” light when an potential issue is detected) stated that the catalytic converter test had not completed. The STAR technicians said that this is a common problem when you’ve recently had service as the monitors are often reset and the catalytic converter test can take a couple hundred miles to complete. I was told to just go drive my car more and return. Over the next two months, I drove whenever I could, taking weekend trips I didn’t intend, returning weekly to have them re-check my OBD II monitors and ultimately putting 1,000 miles on my car. Still not complete, and still told there was nothing I could do but drive. Do more city driving I was told once. Do highway driving. This final visit, I was told to drive my car up into the mountains. I was fed up. I went to the DMV to try to figure out what else I could do other than just driving more.

I should pause here to tell you that my struggles are not uncommon. The state actually has a guide listing vehicles with known OBD issues. If you search, you can find forums full of people who have spent months putting thousands of miles on their cars attempting to get these tests to complete. What is likely uncommon, is this problem happening to any wealthy person or state lawmaker. It tends to happen on older cars, and if you’re willing to put out the money, you can pay the dealership to put the car on a dyno to complete this test.

My registration expired despite my efforts. You can pay your renewal fees, but the state doesn’t consider the car registered until it passes inspection. If I were wealthy, I would probably have a private driveway or garage to park in and another car to drive in the meantime, but I’m not. My car is parked on the street, and there, it received a $121 ticket for expired tabs. To the credit of the local enforcement officers, I’ve since put notes on my dashboard about my inspection delays and they have not issued an additional ticket. But, $121 hurts. Normally, this is what we call a “fix-it ticket” in CA, where you can resolve the problem, get an officer to sign off, and then only pay $10, but I had no way to resolve this problem.

I went to the DMV and was promptly told there was nothing they could do for me. Apparently, I could have gotten a 60 day registration extension, but the STAR technicians were supposed to tell me to go the DMV for that and never did. The DMV recommended I not pay for the extension as it would only last a few more days at this point and wasn’t worth the $50 fee. They recommended I dispute the ticket but said they could not reduce or void the fine. Then, they attempted to send me on my way with no guidance whatsoever on how to resolve my never-ending inspection. Luckily, someone to whom I relayed my woes on the way in recommended I ask for a BAR form, which I did and the attendant said “Oh, yes, you could try to contact them. Here’s a form with their number.” — “Wow. Thanks DMV. Glad someone recommended I ask for this.”

From the DMV parking lot, frustrated and annoyed, I called the Bureau of Automotive Repair (BAR). The BAR person told me that this is a common problem they handle through their Referee Program and that the STAR technicians should have told me to call them right away (2 months ago) and that the DMV should have told me to call them right away. I informed them that in all my searching online, full of forums of frustration on this problem, not once had I seen anyone who was given this advice and reported it back to the community, so it appears that their training is lacking (or non-existent). The BAR provided me the number of the Referee Program, which I phoned next, still from the parking lot of the DMV, but with hope that maybe there was a light at the end of this tunnel.

The Referee Program informed me that the next step was for them to send me a letter to take to a dealer. I had to go to a dealer for an inspection, and if they didn’t find anything wrong, the dealer would give me a letter to bring back to a Referee Center. Despite my concerns that the dealer has no incentive to tell me my car is fine knowing that if they say something is wrong I have to get it fixed or else I can’t drive the car, I proceeded to pay $175 for an inspection by a Toyota dealer.

For $175, Toyota basically plugged a code reader into the OBD II system and told me there was a “pending” code for the catalytic converter, which I should replace. According to them, the STAR technicians should have seen this pending code and alerted me to it on my first visit. I asked why the check engine light had not illuminated, and was told that the pending code is thrown on the first failure, and the check engine light illuminates with the second, which they expected would happen within a few days. So, I re-explained that I had driven the car over 1,000 miles without the catalytic converter test completing and they didn’t seem to know how or why that would happen. I asked them to run the car through it’s test cycle on their dyno and either get it to complete or produce the check engine light. Unfortunately, their dyno was down, so this took another week before they had results.

The pending code was triggered again, but the Toyota dealership still couldn’t produce the full error code or the check engine light. I asked how this could happen and now I got a new explanation that my car wasn’t failing the smog test, but it was right in the middle of the “pending” area and they expected it to fail soon. So, I asked for a letter stating that my car wasn’t failing, and then they changed their explanation again, saying that it was failing, despite not producing the check engine light. The dealer wants $2,300 to replace my catalytic converter.

I called the Referee Program back to relay this information and find out if there was anything I could do. They agreed that this response from the dealer was concerning and they emailed a Referee. I was supposed to hear back in 2–3 business days. A week later, I called the Referee Program back. They drafted another email to the Referee who had not looked at my issue yet and said I should hear back soon. A week later, I still haven’t heard back.

On July 14th, nearing the 21 day grace period on my $121 ticket, I disputed it online, figuring that at worst, it would gain me some time to resolve my inspection woes. Within a week, I received a response dated July 15th (nice to know they’re so efficient and responsive with something) declining my dispute and informing me that I had 25 days to pay the fine, resolve the issue, or have an in-person hearing. With the delays from the dealer and the Referee Program, I was now nearing the end of my 25 day period before I’d begin to accrue late fees on my ticket, So I decided to go for an in-person hearing.

Before my hearing, I was required to pay the $121 fine, which would be refunded if they found in my favor. While the official was polite, he really wasn’t concerned at all with what attempts I was making or the fact that I was following the state’s own process, which seems to have many holes. In his eyes, my car wass not registered. It turns out that if the DMV had let me pay for a 60 day extension, which would have covered the date of this ticket, he would have thrown it out. They didn’t tell me that. Too bad. He informed me that I couldn’t park the car on the street. I told him that it would cost $20 per day to park in a garage. Too bad. He informed me that I couldn’t drive it without risking a $4,000 fine (I later discovered that he was citing the vehicle code section 4000, though I believe he did so in a manner to intentionally make it sound like it was a $4,000 fine to scare me into parking the car somewhere privately). I told him that even if I paid to replace the catalytic converter, I’d likely have to drive the car 100 miles or more before it would complete the tests required to pass inspection. Too bad. I told him that I hadn’t finished this process because of the poorly trained STAR technicians, the lack of information from the DMV, the delay by the dealer as part of the state process and the delay by the BAR Referee Program and that I was following the process the state has set up for this issue. None of that mattered. It didn’t matter that this process can take longer than 60 days but that the state has also limited extensions to 60 days. Too bad. I was told that my problem was with the DMV (a state organization), but this ticket (a city ticket) was valid. I bet that if one legislator ever had to go through this process, it wouldn’t be “too bad”. I am reminded of this clip from Goodfellas, and it saddens me that I’m comparing my government to organized crime (warning: vulgar language):

After exhausting all other avenues, I chose to replace my catalytic converter despite the fact that it still wasn’t producing a full error code. For those who think I should have just done this from the start for the good of the environment, please realize that catalytic converters contain heavy metals, so unnecessarily junking one and purchasing another is not good for the environment either. I found an aftermarket part myself and used my own mechanic instead of allowing the dealership to do the work. This reduced my costs from $2,300 down to about $400. In September, I had it installed. I purchased my own OBD II code reader ($100) so I didn’t have to keep driving to the STAR station to ask them to check it. About 200 miles later, the catalytic converter test had finally completed and my car was finally ready to pass inspection, which it did after I paid another $50. I immediately went to the DMV to get a temporary registration, and in October, after 6 months of frustration, I finally put new registration tabs on my license plate. The final tally, beyond the countless hours out of my life and stress over a 6 month period, was about $1,000, 1,500 miles of wear and tear, and 50 gallons of gas (another $150) along with the exhaust fumes it produced, for a registration which will now last about 18 months before I get to start over. Had I chosen to garage my car during this period, at the going rate in my SF neighborhood of around $400/month, this would have cost me an additional $2,400, and this was all to fix something which may not have been broken in the first place.

So, what’s the problem? It’s not the regulation that cars must not pollute. It’s the mechanisms put in place which (maybe by coincidence or maybe by design) adversely impact those of lower means. We require that the OBD II monitors have completed even though failure to complete under normal driving in properly functioning cars is a known issue (generally with older vehicles) which we haven’t forced the auto industry to fix. We rely on a private mechanic to relay all the state information. We seem just fine with the fact that the DMV fails to properly inform its customers. It’s the fact that the process to deal with this known issue involves hundreds more in expenses and months longer than the extension the DMV will offer. It’s the fact that you are expected to garage your car during this process at your own expense. What is the low-income parent who drives to work supposed to do? It’s the fact that our hearing officers don’t care about these problems. They see themselves there to enforce the law, not assess intent or holes in the process. To them, the law is black and white, and if you’re sitting in a gray area a legislator didn’t consider when the regulation was written, “too bad.” I fell through the cracks of the system, and no one seemed to care that these cracks exist.

My story involved an auto registration renewal, something most people pay for every year and have no idea the terrors that our fellow residents sometimes go through with this process and how that might destroy someone of lesser means. But this is by no means the only regulatory policy with this effect (regardless of intent). In San Francisco, a street sweeping ticket is $76, something you only risk if you don’t have a driveway. For some, this is a slap on the wrist. For others, it is food off the table. I once had my car stolen in Massachusetts. When the police found it, they refused to let me collect it (from near my house) instead stating it was policy to have it towed to a lot. A cab to the police station, a release letter, a cab to the tow lot across the city, and $500 in towing and storage fees later, I retrieved my car. The police officer told me not to worry, theft insurance would cover it. When I explained I didn’t have theft insurance, she nearly cried while apologizing for inflicting over $500 in additional costs on me. But she also couldn’t fix it. That was their policy, and for me, it was just “too bad”.

When you are trying to do everything right, to be a good citizen, to make ends meet and put food on the table, it is hard. Challenges come, and you face them. When the state hits you, it hurts. When you find out that the state has created regulations which put you in a catch-22 and they don’t care, it just makes you want to give up. Then, it makes you want to turn to anyone who would get rid of the boot standing on the back of hard working people. Do I believe that these are the regulations that the Republican Party wants to get rid of? No. But that is the perception. Every time a legislator doesn’t care about the few people hurt… Every time a state employee doesn’t do their job… Every time a judge doesn’t care about the circumstances… the foundation of our community crumbles a little bit more. You want to get rid of that payday loan on the corner? Figure out how to get people out of the position where they need to resort to that payday loan. Make sure that your regulations don’t adversely impact those most vulnerable. And when someone does everything in their power, everything physically possible to abide by the law, don’t just tell them “too bad.”