World file
Sunday's newspaper will have an interesting letter to the editor proposing that the city get into the business of issuing safety inspection stickers for cars.
It's the latest in a huge pile of letters we've gotten in the past month addressing the city's financial crisis and proposing solutions, which have included budget cuts, salary cuts, lay offs, more sales taxes, more property taxes, a new city income/earnings tax, and many, many other revenue and spending notions, some good, some not.
In this case, the writer, Phil Goldfarb of Tulsa, make the point that for a nominal fee of $25 every other year we could raise some money for the city, ensure some minimal level of safety on streets and have a chance to make sure cars have liability insurance.
I'm not sure the city isn't pre-empted from doing that by state law, but assuming that it isn't, I can think of a quick enforcement issue that would have to be addressed: Who would be required to have the inspection sticker? Owners of cars registered at Tulsa addreses or anyone driving on Tulsa streets? If you go with the former, how would police officers be able to sort Tulsa cars from non-Tulsa cars on sight? If you go with the latter, wouldn't that have a pretty nasty impact on the city's reputation and its ability to draw tourists and outside consumers looking to buy at Tulsa stores?
Laying that issue aside, Goldfarb suggests the city should split the inspection fees with stores that do the inspects: $15 for the inspector; $10 for the city. I have a better idea: Have the city do the inspections and keep all the money.
The level of inspection that was being done (typically at service stations) back when the state was in the business wasn't the sort of thing the required an ASA-certified mechanic.
They checked to make sure you had a working horn, a rear-view mirror and tread on your tires. With a little equipment – like a mirror for looking under cars to make sure the mufflers and tailpipes are connected – just about anyone could do it.
Why not have the inspections done at city offices that are dispersed throughout the city with people on duty every day – in other words, fire stations. They could be done at police stations too.
That way, we could legitimately think of the inspection fee as a part of the funding stream for public safety – police and fire salaries, where the city's most urgent crisis is. It wouldn't require any new personnel.
I don't think this solves the city's money problems, but if the enforcement issue could be worked out, it would have the positive impacts Goldfarb describes, and at least one other: It would help assure some basic level of environmental efficiency (working or, at least, attached exhaust systems) on the cars on our streets.
The state almanac says Tulsa County has roughly 550,000 vehicles registered in it. Based on the fact that 65 percent of Tulsa County's population is in Tulsa, let's assume there are 357,500 vehicles in the city. At $25 (a year, not every other year as Goldfard suggests), that's $8.9 million a year, just about enough to solve the police/fire funding crisis.
