Connecticut City Studies Hybrid Cars June 2005

Gas-electric hybrid cars are becoming more popular. Town tax records show it and national automotive sales figures prove it.

Lawmakers had hoped to make hybrid and other so-called clean cars even more popular with legislation that shapes consumer behavior.

But after a failed bid to make Connecticut one of the first states to offer incentives for clean cars and tax penalties on vehicles with high emissions, lawmakers settled for a study on ways to promote clean emissions technology.

"What we have directed the Department of Environment Protection to do is to look at incentives and disincentives that would steer people to buying cars that are more environmentally friendly," said Rep. Richard Roy, D-Milford, co-chairman of the state legislature's Environment Committee, which introduced the original bill and supported passage of the modified one. "What we tried to do is to get this in place so that we can start to get a handle on global warming and on air pollution and on the greenhouse-gas effect."

Last year, state legislators passed a bill to exempt gas-electric hybrid vehicles that achieve at least 40 miles per gallon on the highway from the state's 6 percent sales tax. They also directed state environmental officials to adopt more strict emission standards for light-duty motor vehicles.

Since then, sales of hybrid vehicles have been brisk. Town tax records show there were 70 Toyota hybrid Priuses registered in Greenwich last year, more than double the number in 2003. The total number of hybrid vehicles is harder to gauge because the town doesn't distinguish between gasoline and hybrid models in tax records.

Nationally, 83,153 hybrid vehicles were sold last year, up 75 percent from 2003, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Electric Drive Transpor-tation Association.

But some state legislators wanted to do more to lower emissions. One proposal was to offer sales tax reductions of up to 3 percent on vehicles that have low emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon monoxide. That incentive would have applied to gasoline-powered vehicles and hybrid models that are not fuel-efficient enough to meet the 6 percent sales tax exemption guidelines.

"The idea of consumer incentives is one that has been discussed a lot," said Charles Rothenberger, a legal fellow for the Connecticut Fund for the Environment, a New Haven advocacy group that pushed for the legislation. "There's been a lot of literature on it."

The bill would have put Connecticut at the forefront of encouraging people to buy low-emission vehicles, said Paul Farrell, a supervising environmental analyst with the state Department of Environmental Protection.

"It's radical in that the state's using its power of taxation to try to influence consumer behavior," he said.

Although the legislation had general support, parts of it -- such as a proposal to impose tax penalties on the sales of vehicles with high emissions -- were controversial.

"Is it fair to the contractor who needs the pickup or the SUV to do their job?" asked Charles Territo, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Alliance of Automobile Manu-facturers. "Is it fair to the weekend enthusiast who needs to haul their shell boat to the Sound for the weekend?"

Recognizing that a bill with many tax ramifications might be hard to pass, supporters decided to turn the legislation into a proposal for further study. That made the most sense, they said, because any law would require further work by environmental officials, who would need time to develop standards for judging vehicle emissions.

Also, supporters worried that the original bill, if passed, might face a judicial challenge similar to one mounted in California. That state has one of the strictest laws in the country, aggressively regulating emissions of greenhouse gases with tougher testing and incentive programs. Auto industry lobbyists have sued, challenging the state's authority to regulate emissions, which they say should be done by the federal government.

"What decision comes out of that (lawsuit) may affect what we can and cannot do with our ideas," Roy said. "We may have to come up with a whole new premise to reduce these emissions."

Both the state House and Senate approved the revised bill. Greenwich legislators voted in favor of the bill,

with the exception of Rep. Claudia "Dolly" Powers, R-151st District.

"While I fully supported and voted last year for the incentives offered to people to buy the lower fuel cars, I don't agree with imposing a tax on the higher fuel cars," she said. "I don't happen to like those cars. I drive a Subaru myself, but I don't feel like we should be imposing a tax."

The legislation requires the DEP to deliver its study by the start of next year. Officials also must meet with key stakeholders and include input from environmentalists and business and automotive representatives in their report.

"It's not going to pack much of a punch," predicted Melissa Anderson, spokeswoman for the Alexandria, Va.-based American International Auto-mobile Dealers. She said auto industry representatives will continue to oppose the use of tax penalties to influence consumer choice.

"There's not going to be any room to budge on that," she said.

SOURCE: Greenwich Time

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