Officials hope it will be harder to cheat on emissions tests

ST. LOUIS -- State clean-air officials hope changes likely to be made to the vehicle emissions tests in the St. Louis area will make it harder for people to cheat the program.

St. Louis area residents must have their vehicles tested for emissions because the air doesn't meet federal standards for ground-level ozone.

A bill sent to Gov. Matt Blunt would change the testing program by decentralizing it and allowing small shops throughout the area to run it.

Last week, a federal grand jury indicted two men charged with being part of a conspiracy to print and distribute fake emissions test reports. Earnest E. Carter, 53, of Pasadena Hills, and Donald L. Allen Sr., 46, of St. Louis, both pleaded not guilty Tuesday in federal court.

Prosecutors contend that Carter printed the fake test certificates on a home computer and that Allen was one of several people who distributed them. A Missouri Department of Natural Resources investigator said as many as 4,000 of the fakes might have been printed.

"We certainly have to prosecute this because it's a crime of fraud, and fraudulently producing a public document," federal prosecutor Catherine Hanaway said. She added that on a personal note, she is as frustrated by the emissions test system as everyone else is. "It is inconvenient to have to work for a living, but we don't let people print their own money," she said.

Leanne Tippett Mosby, deputy division director at the Missouri Department of Natural Resources' division of environmental quality, said the new program might include a reporting system that would make test results immediately available to the Department of Revenue. There is currently a one-day lag between a test and the time it is posted electronically.

Under the current program, a motorist receives a certificate with the vehicle's emissions test result.

"What we would really like to do is go to a paperless system," she said. ". . . If we don't have a piece of paper, it can't be counterfeited."