Annual car inspections will no longer be mandatory in New Hampshire starting next year under the state budget Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed into law Friday.
The provision eliminating the inspections was a late addition to the state spending package lawmakers approved this week. Republican leaders tucked it into the budget’s trailer bill to help the overall spending plan gain traction among libertarian-leading House members.
The House passed a standalone bill ending state-mandated car inspections earlier this year. But when the bill moved to the Senate, it sparked a pitched battle between lawmakers who said annual inspections amounted to a scam that mostly benefits auto dealers and mechanics, and those who said the inspections helped keep unsafe vehicles off the road.
After Republicans in the Senate couldn't agree on whether to eliminate inspections or require them every other year, the bill died.
But once added to the state budget last week, the inspection repeal cleared the Senate without drama. And in the House, where the repeal had originally sailed through as a standalone bill, the provision ended up playing a key role in getting the budget passed.
Before the final vote Thursday, House Majority Leader Jason Osborne said that ending auto inspecting was something voters dearly want.
“The one thing they ask me about is, ‘When are you going to repeal those auto inspections?’ That’s what we are going to do today,” Osborne said.
The House did, though the part of the budget that included the inspection repeal passed by just a single vote, after House Speaker Sherman Packard voted to break what would have been a tie.
Concerns over safety
In the wake of that vote, the New Hampshire Auto Dealers Association is again raising alarms that eliminating inspections will make state roads — where accidents are already up — more dangerous.
“The elimination of annual inspections is both reckless and shortsighted,” Dan Bennett, president of the New Hampshire Auto Dealers Association, said Friday.
Right now, 13 states don’t require annual safety inspections.
Bennett added that two states that repealed annual inspections, Florida and Colorado, both saw an immediate uptick in car accidents.
“It’s hard to believe that despite facts and data, the ‘safest’ state in the nation just chose to eliminate vehicle safety inspections,” Bennet added.
Impact on state revenues unclear
With more than a million cars now registered in New Hampshire, it’s hard to peg the exact cost to auto dealers and mechanics of ending mandatory inspections.
But the state has indicated it expects to take a financial hit from the change.
According to the Department of Safety, ditching the requirement that cars be inspected annually would cost the state about $3.5 million a year in lost revenue.
Most of the money the state collects from inspection fees flows to the Highway Fund which pays for road maintenance and construction. But about 12% of the money is also shared directly with cities and towns.
